


On The Line

by thatstaceygirl



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Age Difference, Character Death, F/M, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2015-04-07
Packaged: 2018-03-03 09:35:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 34,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2846321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatstaceygirl/pseuds/thatstaceygirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A mutual appreciation of sass and pop culture leads to an unlikely friendship with the potential for more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**"No loss is felt more keenly than the loss of what might have been. No nostalgia hurts as much as nostalgia for things that never existed."**

  
\- Rabih Alameddine, _An Unnecessary Woman_

  


* * *

New Mexico. That's when it had started.

Coulson had pulled her aside while Jane ran ahead to check on her equipment, directing agents on where to place things, ensuring that the lab was exactly as it was supposed to be. 

"Miss Lewis-"

"Darcy."

Coulson's hands stilled as he looked up, a business card half removed from the neat leather case he'd pulled from the interior pocket of his jacket. The implacable mask faltered for the briefest of moments before it was slapped back into place.

"Miss Lewis sounds like a school marm," she'd explained and, for just a second, she thought he'd looked amused. 

“Miss Lewis-”

“Darcy.”

He just stared at her, eyes narrowing very slightly, and she smiled back. “I can do this all day, Agent iPod Stealer. I get paid the same nothing no matter what.”

Coulson extended the card after that, letting her take it before continuing to speak. “Dr. Foster is being-” 

“Difficult? Stubborn? Stupid by not accepting a fat government check to do what she was going to do anyway?”

“-I was going to say released to continue her research, but if that’s how you’d like to think of it, by all means.”

“You were so thinking it too. Don’t lie.”

He ignored her. She thought that was probably smart, because she wasn’t lying about being able to do this all day.

“Your employer has declined S.H.I.E.L.D.’s offer of patronage, but if you find yourselves in need of assistance, don’t hesitate to call.” He paused again, as if he were already regretting talking to her. She had that effect on people, sometimes. Mostly on Jane. “The direct line to my office is on the front of the card, but my mobile number is on the back.”

“You’re totally flirting with me.” Darcy’s grin grew as Coulson’s expression settled into that impassive mask. It could have been hiding anything. She chose to think that it was concealing an intense feeling, like lust, and not at all an intense feeling like shut-the-hell-up-Darcy. “It’s okay, you know. I’m incorrigible and irresistible. It was only a matter of time before you succumbed to my wiles.”

“Miss Lewis-”

“Darcy.”

“-I’m not flirting with you.”

Darcy smiled, tapping the business card against her lips. “Yet.” She waved the card at Coulson, stepping away from him toward Jane. “I like tulips and dark chocolate. And Mexican food.” She turned away then, slipping the card into the back pocket of her jeans. She didn’t need to look at him to know he was watching. And probably rolling his eyes. That was usually what happened.

* * *

A little more than a month passed before she used any of the numbers on the card. She hadn’t even told Jane that Coulson had given it to her, because it was one of those things that would send Jane off on a tangent about her research and how it was important and how Big Government was going to ruin everything. She was paraphrasing, of course, because she very rarely listened when Jane went off on those rants. 

The sun had set hours before and Jane was still hard at work going over the latest round of satellite data, so Darcy took a moment for herself and slipped up to the roof. She sat on one of the lounges once the fire was burning and pulled both her phone and the card out of her pocket. Even though the sky was dark with the Milky Way spectacularly bright overhead, making it even later on the east coast, she dialed the hand written number on the back of the card first. A guy like Coulson always had his phone on him. 

He picked up on the third ring.

“How can I help you, Miss Lewis?”

“Darcy.”

He didn’t say anything. She grinned, pulling her blanket closer. It might not be winter, but desert nights got cold. “Are you at the office? You are, aren’t you.”

Darcy thought she heard a huff of what sounded like amusement on the other end of the line. “I am, actually. Which is good for you, since you called. What do you need?”

“I need to know who was pawing at my iPod.”

“Today?”

“Not today, you doof. When you guys had it.”

“Good. I was about to tell you that the surveillance team assigned to you and Dr. Foster isn’t quite that thorough.”

“Ha ha. Im going to start calling you Agent Sassypants.” There was another huff. This time she was almost positive it was laughter. 

“What’s wrong with your iPod, Miss Lewis?”

“Darcy. And I found a couple of new playlists on there today, so someone seems to have had their way with Mae West.”

“Mae West?” That voice was a little too innocent sounding to Darcy, though it was possible that she was reading more into it than necessary.

“Yes. Mae West.”

“I had no idea you were a fan.”

“Dude, Mae West is my personal hero. Not only was she a successful woman in a male-dominated industry, she took something that most would consider to be a liability at the time, her unapologetic sexuality, and used it like a weapon to get where she wanted. And that was decades before the Women’s Lib movement. She’s an icon.”

“I'm sure she’d be honored that you named your iPod after her.”

“I’m sure she wouldn’t give a shit about it, but your sarcasm is both noted and appreciated, Agent Sassypants.”

They never got back around to who had added the playlists to her iPod, but Big Band music started to grow on her.


	2. Chapter 2

The phone calls became regular occurrences, happening once or twice a week, and lasted for hours. It was always Darcy who initiated, calling Coulson with her thoughts on movies and television, occasionally music (though his opinion on anything that was created after the late 70s was that it was shit). Media and pop culture was nothing more than the foot in the door, though. It was the opening volley of conversations that spanned every imaginable topic, from religion (he claimed atheism, she was an avowed Pastafarian) to relationships (she was the first person to talk to him after Audrey left for Portland, ending their brief affair), from family (it was no surprise that two only children found some commonality) to the future (he never wanted to retire, she planned on applying to IWP to study statecraft and counterintelligence).

It was after one of these marathon calls that she was caught. It was bound to happen at some point, because she wasn’t particularly sneaky. Darcy hung up her phone and turned to head back to the lab only to find Jane there, waiting for her. 

“What?”

“You know you’re playing with fire, don’t you, Darcy?”

She was very aware of that, actually. Every conversation highlighted it. Comparing their lives, her and Coulson’s, was laughable. Coulson was twice her age, had spent more years than she’d been alive protecting the world from itself. What he did, what he had done, was one of the topics that they’d never broached. It was an unspoken agreement between them.

“What are you talking about, Jane?”

“This thing you’re doing with Agent Coulson. It’s not going to end well. Please tell me you realize that.”

Darcy shrugged, her hand slipping into her pocket to touch the earrings he’d sent her, thin silver hoops with vibrant blue dangly bits. He’d said they just looked like something she’d like, that they were something to cheer her up after their last talk, when she’d told him all about her last ugly break up with the latest in a string of- not losers, but men who were just never quite the right fit. He’d sent them because he was a friend, a good friend, and she held onto that thought. They were friends, _just_ friends, and they couldn’t ever be anything other than _just_ friends for more reasons than she cared to count. To entertain anything other than that was to court heart break. “I don’t know what you’re on, Jane. We’re just talking. That’s it.”

Jane didn’t look convinced, but she dropped it.

* * *

Spring faded into summer, and late night phone calls started to include text messages. With Coulson's schedule, that was easier sometimes, even if Darcy missed the connection of hearing his little sounds- the amused huff, the way the lilt of his voice changed when he was being sarcastic and daring whomever he was speaking with to call him on it. The concern she'd heard, carefully controlled but still there, when she'd been out of breath during their last call, at the 4th of July. No matter how much she explained it was humidity and allergies, that tight sound hadn't left. The next day, she'd found a box of Benadryl waiting for her in the lab.

She tried to tell herself that it was just how Coulson was, that he was a guy who took care of people. She was only moderately successful, but Darcy was self-aware enough to recognize that her interest in him was skirting that line between Friends and More. 

It was late when the text came in and she had been almost asleep.

**» Are you up?**

She responded with a selfie, laying in her bed, hair as mess, the fine sheen of sweat that seemed to constantly coat her skin glinting in the light of the flash.

**» You're looking a little sweaty. Hot out?**

» I don't sweat. I glisten.

**» I'll remember that for the next time you're glistening.**

» Are you trying to sext me? Because that sounds vaguely dirty.  
» And if you are, I demand photographic evidence.

**» I'm not going to send you dirty pictures, Darcy.**

» Okay, fine, I'll send them to you then.

**» That's something I prefer to see in person.  
» There's no way a photograph would do it justice.**

» I knew you wanted to sext me.

**» Good night, Darcy.**

» Sweet Dreams, Phil.


	3. Chapter 3

Summer crashed into fall, and that was Darcy's favorite time of year. The sweaters and scarves came back out, the cute coats and boots and pumpkin spice flavored everything.

The stream of contact was near constant, between texts sent every few hours when work permitted and the regular phone calls and, on one hilariously disastrous occasion, a video chat. Jane continued to give Darcy worried Looks every time she touched her phone. Darcy continued to ignore them. It wasn't like she and Phil were in a relationship or anything... Yeah, there was some flirting that happened, but Phil was all gentleman and refused to take advantage of the way she continuously threw herself at him, taking every innuendo-laced phrase and ham-handed pass in stride like it was a normal part of his day. It was almost enough to give a girl a complex, especially since she had _never_ been as unsuccessful in the romance department as she was with Phil Coulson. Not that it mattered. Since they were just friends.

Besides, he was so far out of her league, she reasoned. And it wasn’t as if they were ever in the same time zone, let alone the same state. There were times when Darcy was certain they weren’t even on the same continent when he’d answer her call. She had no desire to engage in a long-distance relationship with a man who was married to his job. 

Maybe.

This adult shit was confusing. Naturally, that became one of their conversation topics.

“Does it ever get any easier?”

It was late, or early depending on how you looked at it, and Darcy was once again in bed. She’d long since invested in a stereo bluetooth headset, the body of the receiver looped around her neck with the earbuds pressed into place. It made it hard to lay on her side, which she preferred, but that comfort was a small sacrifice to make to have both hands free.

“Does what ever get easier, Darcy?”

He sounded tired too. Not sleepy. She’d heard his sleepy voice many times and sleepy sounded different, but weary down to his bones. She didn’t know where he was and she didn’t know what he was doing, because she knew better than to ask, but not knowing didn’t make her any less concerned, especially if he was being worked as hard as it sounded.

“Life. Being a quote-unquote grown up. Like, I _hope_ that it’s something that I will eventually get the hang of, but the more I see, the more I’m convinced that pretty much everyone is just winging it.”

Knowing Phil, the long pause before he answered was only partially because he was dead on his feet, no matter where he was or what he was working on. He was great with the quick, witty quips and with coming up with the most devastatingly hilarious remarks on the fly, but things like this, the important things that demanded a real response? He took his time. She really liked that about him, that no matter what off-the-wall topic she threw at him, he always knew the right way to respond.

“I think, in a way, we all are... Some people moreso than others. Previous generations had a blueprint they followed: establish yourselves, get married, have a family. That doesn’t work in all cases today, and I think that realizing this has cast some doubt on what adulthood should or should not be.”

“That was actually pretty deep.”

“What can I say? I’m a man of untold depths.” The amusement was there, under the exhaustion and the seriousness of the topic. That was another thing... There was more to him than what met the eye, no matter how hard he worked to convince the world around him otherwise. Phil Coulson may be “just" a man, but there was nothing about him that was average or typical and, Heaven help her, Darcy was really coming to love that. Every day, every conversation revealed something new and it did nothing but intensify her curiosity and enhance her already considerable appreciation for the man.

"Untold depths, huh? Maybe I'm going to have to pull a Jacques Cousteau and start exploring you. See what it is laying beneath the still waters of Philip Coulson." She teased, like she always teased, but Darcy teased with the truth. She thought she'd gotten to know him fairly well, what he liked and didn't like, what he thought about certain things and how he felt about others, but there was always something more to learn and she wanted to be the one to discover it.

She expected he'd tease back, but he didn't. Phil went silent and she was about to say his name to see if he was even still there or if he had fallen asleep on her when he finally spoke up. "You might not like what you find if you do that, Darcy." It was as much his tone as his use of her first name, rather than the teasingly formal Miss Lewis that he normally favored, that had her sitting up and taking notice. There was a tension there that was normally absent- or maybe that tension was always there and he was just too tired to hide it. Either way, it was a crack in his carefully cultivated facade.

"Is this your way of telling me that you poop with the door open too?" she shot back, hoping her normal ridiculousness would help to ease whatever troubled him about their line of conversation. "Because there's only room in this relationship for one public pooper, and I already called dibs on that spot."

Whether the muffled burst of laughter was amusement or disgust didn't really matter, but based on his incredulous " _Public pooper?_ ", Darcy was putting her money on shocked amusement. It was enough to burst that bubble of tense unhappiness and that was really all she cared about.

"Yes, public pooper, and you can thank my father and his tremendous lack of experience in raising a little girl for that gem."

"I'm putting a postcard in the mail for him as we speak."

"That should brighten his week up."

"Well, if we're brightening weeks, maybe we should aim higher."

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Phil? Because I'm totally thinking about one of those personalized children's books, except more like _Go The Fuck To Sleep_."

There was a brief pause before Coulson answered, and Darcy chose to interpret it as taking a moment to silently appreciate her brilliance. "...That's not what I was thinking at all."

"Oh. Well, I'm out of ideas then. It's too late to think of creative ways to break my dad's brain."

"You don't think finding out that his twenty-something daughter spends several hours a week texting and conversing with a man roughly his age wouldn't do the job?" And there was that tension again. Darcy's eyes narrowed as she took a second to consider why talking about their age difference, as large as it was, might make him all... whatever it was he was feeling, but she shut that down quickly. Her first instinct was probably wrong anyway. He was still nursing the hurt from Audrey leaving no matter how fine with it he claimed to be and there was no way he could-

Except maybe-

No. She wasn't going to get her hopes up that way.

"Well, first of all, my dad is _way_ older than you. You're actually closer in age to my mom. And secondly, I like to think that he would appreciative of the way you try to keep me out of trouble and encourage good decisions. It's important to have friends who want what's best for you and he knows that."

The pause came back, but this time his words were tinged with something different. Resignation maybe? Christ, this beating around the bush thing was such a pain in the ass. "Friends, huh?" 

"Friends seems as good a label as any."

"I suppose so." 

That faint patina of disappointment still surrounded his words, so Darcy decided to take a chance. "Besides, I'm a classy, sophisticated broad. If I'm going to be wooed by dashing, devastatingly handsome older men, it has to be in person. I'm no phone floozy."

"Well..."

Darcy laughed, clapping a hand over her mouth to stifle the sound just in case Jane was still up and concentrating. "Shut up, Phil."


	4. Chapter 4

The weather grew colder and worked picked up in New Mexico. Jane kept Darcy busy... and perhaps it was a good thing. Being busy ensured that she'd be distracted around Christmas time, a.k.a. The Suck Ass Time of Year. 

It wasn't that Darcy was a Scrooge or anything. She liked the idea behind the holiday. She liked buying her friends and loved ones little gifts when she could afford them and making them if she couldn't. This was one of the Couldn't years. With the downturn in the economy and construction jobs slowly but surely drying up, her father's disposable income was dwindling and what he had was spent on her education and her grandmother's hospital bills. She might be an only child, but she wasn't a spoiled little brat, so when crunch time came and it was between paying her car payment and buying a plane ticket home for the holidays, Darcy went the practical route. It was probably the most grown up decision she'd ever made in her life (up to that point)... But that fleeting feeling of pride didn't change the fact that she was going to be on her own for Christmas and New Years.

Phil called the weekend of her birthday, just before Thanksgiving, initiating the conversation for the first time. Darcy wasn't going to pretend that it wasn't flattering. After months of being the one doing the pursuing, the shoe was suddenly on the other foot and it felt... _good_.

"Work's been tough," he said. "I wanted to send you something for the big day, but I ran out of time."

"You don't have to get me anything, Phil," she protested. "The call's good enough. Especially with Suck-mas coming up."

"Suck-mas? Feeling a little Grinchy this year, Miss Lewis?"

"Nothing but bad things happen at Christmas, and I don't mean stupid stuff like getting the wrong color car for a gift." That was when she went on to explain the Curse of Suck-mas. The weeks leading up to Christmas were littered with emotional landmines for Darcy. One year it had been a major car accident on Christmas Eve that left her in the hospital for a week and in a leg cast for months after. Then there were the pet disappearances, three cats and two dogs who up and left at different times until, finally, she had just stopped asking for new pets. Her parents's split and, a year later, the finalization of their divorce. Her mother breaking promises of visits in order to spend the time with whatever flavor of the month had caught her attention. Her grandfather's sudden passing the year before and her grandmother's decline were the most recent in a long list of Shit That Sucks. 

"So, in a way it's kind of good that Jane is taking off tomorrow and won't be back until the new year," she said, brows pulled together as she picked at a thread on the blanket she was wearing like a poncho. "I wouldn't want to be a downer when she's feeling all festive."

"Where's Dr. Foster heading?" Darcy could hear the frown in his words. She could practically see the way his eyes would be all crinkled up. That was his concerned face. 

"Her mom is in Chicago, she said. Something about an art exhibit, so she's subletting her place in London to set up shop here for a while."

"So when are you heading home for the holidays? Not too long after, I imagine."

Darcy sighed, gnawing at a little hangy piece of skin on her lower lip. Stupid winter winds giving her chapped lips. "I'm not. Gas is stupid expensive and a plane ticket isn't in the budget because I enjoy eating, so I'm flying solo this year."

Phil was quiet for a moment after that, his Agent Coulson voice in place when he finally did respond. "That's a shame. I'm sure your family will miss you."

"My dad probably will," she said, shrugging even though he couldn't see it. "My grandma hasn't recognized me in years. Alzheimer's is a son of a bitch. I don't recommend it." She cleared her throat, changing the subject. Just because she hated Suck-mas, it didn't mean she expected other people to as well. "What about you? Are there epic Coulson Family Christmas Shenanigans you're going to be getting into?"

"My cousin invited me to spend the holidays with her family, but I'll probably end up working." 

"That sucks. I hope you get double time for that."

"Double time and hazard pay."

"I'd start calling you Daddy Warbucks, but you don't look anything like Albert Finney."

The mildly distracted quality of his responses, present after she'd told him about her holiday plans, disappeared at that, banished by a soft snort of amusement. "Thank you for that."

"That's what I'm here for, Phil. To amuse you and stroke your ego."

"You're doing an admirable job."

"You're welcome."

* * *

The deliveries started to arrive a couple of days after Jane left for Chicago. First, it was a couple of boxes. She'd signed for them, figuring they were things Jane had arranged and just, like, forgot to tell her about. It wouldn't have been the first time that happened. At first she'd just left them in the lab, but Jane would inevitably call to see how she was doing and Darcy figured it would be a good idea to be able to tell her what exactly it was that had been delivered.

The first box didn't hold any scientific equipment unless there was something astrophysics-y about some beautiful, hand painted glass Christmas ornaments and a stained glass, star-shaped tree topper. The other, much larger box was, perhaps unsurprisingly, a fresh Christmas tree. Where the box with the decorations didn't have so much as a return address attached to it, this one came with a note.

_Sometimes something pretty can make a bad time suck a little less. I expect pictures._

_-Phil_

It took a couple of hours to set the thing up, and then she waited for full dark before she took the pictures he'd requested, mostly so the white twinkle lights she'd spent entirely too much money on would be displayed beautifully. And it was a beautiful tree, if she did say so herself, especially with the way the star at the top glowed red and blue and green. She included a selfie posed in front of the tree when she emailed him that evening. 

_Turns out you were right about the pretty things. I owe you._

_< 3, Darce_

* * *

As Christmas drew closer, Darcy heard from Phil less frequently, and that was fine. It was a busy time of year for everyone, and she already knew that some project that she wasn't allowed to know about was being particularly problematic for him, to the point where he had admitted to being ready to tap out of it entirely. Whatever it was, it had to be bad if it pushed him, Mr. Dedicated To His Work himself, to such an extreme. Darcy, however, didn't have that problem. Oh, she had work to do, certainly, but it was mostly making sure the computers continued to record atmospheric and particle data for Jane, _just in casse_ something signalled a possible Thor Arrival. The rest of her time she spent marathoning TV shows on Netflix and knitting hats and scarves and mittens and socks, some of which would go to friends and family. The bulk of her work, however, was going to end up being donated to a local church that provided for the less fortunate. She wasn't religious by any means, but she was all for people and organizations that helped people who needed it. She took walks when she felt like she needed to move, her taser tucked away into a pocket, though she knew that she wasn't likely to need it in Puente Antiguo. She snapped pictures on her phone of things she thought were interesting or pretty, sometimes sending them to Jane or to her father, but mostly they went to Phil. Usually with commentary, or elaborately constructed backstories, but not all the time.

She was okay with the solitude, mostly. You couldn't grow up as an only child being raised by a single father and _not_ learn how to be okay with it, but as she sat on the roof of the lab, wrapped up in a blanket with a fire burning cheerfully and just two more sleeps until Christmas, Darcy felt lonely. Not just alone, but painfully, achingly lonely, which was a different sort of beast all together. Maybe it was the season and the way she wished she _could_ have gone home to see her dad and her grandmother, or maybe it was just the way the sunset played with the clouds above her head, turning the sky into a riot of color and making her feel so small and insignificant. Maybe it was all of the above. Whatever the reason, no matter what was at play in her head and in her heart, that simple feeling of being lonely, of craving another human presence, was crushing her and she could only deny the tears for so long before the flood gates opened.

Thank God she was alone, because if anyone had seen her like this, she'd be mortified.

She was just starting to get herself back under control when Phil, he of the incredible timing, sent a text message.

**» I'm about to board a plane. Please tell me you're doing something more interesting.**

» Enjoying another beautiful New Mexico sunset. Try not to be too jealous.

She took a selfie to send him, with the sunset behind her, and the best smile she could manage. It wasn't terribly convincing, even to her eyes, but she tried and you got points for effort, right?

Phil replied almost immediately.

**» Beautiful.**  
 **» The sunset's pretty okay too.**  
 **» Have you been crying? Is everything okay?**

She should have known he would pick up on that. 

» Just a small existential crisis is all. A-Okay now, promise.

**» What happened?**

This was the tough part. He had enough to deal with, so she didn't exactly want to add a hefty portion of worrying about her to his plate. At the same time, she didn't want to lie to him. Phil was _amazing_ at the whole listening thing, and the advice thing, and pretty much everything actually. Darcy put up a token fight, but she knew the minute he asked what happened that she was going to crack.

» Just a lonely, low moment.  
» I had a fairly decent cry. I'll probably have another one and go to bed.  
» They happen. You deal and move on.

**» I'm worried about you.**

» You don't have to, Phil.  
» You have enough to worry about. 

**» I do.  
» And you're one of those things.**

» I'll be fine, I promise.  
» I'm going to take a bath and head to bed now.  
» Try to get some sleep on the plane.

**» Good night Darce.**

» Night Phil.


	5. Chapter 5

Her head was buzzing with a headache when she woke up the next morning, thanks to the bottle of wine she’d consumed when the bath hadn’t worked as well as she’d hoped it would, but it wasn’t the first hangover Darcy had ever endured and she had some pretty serious doubts that it would be the last. She could mutter to herself all she wanted about how that wasn't going to happen again, nope, she'd learned her lesson, and still plan about how she was going to have to walk to the store (not even a liquor store or a convenience store, just _the_ store, because there was only one in this town) and pick up another couple of bottles to get through the next couple of days. 

Shit. The next couple of days, because it was Christmas Eve. And everything was going to be closing early tonight and wouldn't be open at all tomorrow, because tomorrow was Christmas. She was way too hungover to deal with grocery shopping and booze shopping and pretty much anything other than knitting and Netflix.

She pulled a blanket off her bed and wore it like a poncho, not caring that she'd flung her fleece pajama pants across the room in an over-heated moment during the night, and shoved her bare feet into her favorite kitty slippers before shuffling out into the rest of the lab. Darcy needed coffee. Darcy needed something solid in her stomach before she puked. Darcy...

Darcy needed to not think about herself in the third person, because that was weird, borderline serial killer shit.

_Come on, Darce, get it together. First water, then Pop-Tarts, then Advil._ "... A lot of Advil." She got halfway through her list before she realized that she wasn't exactly alone in the lab.

First she saw a jacket draped neatly over the back of a chair. Now, normally that wouldn't be an issue. She left her stuff all over the lab all the time, especially when she was on her own. But this wasn't one of her cute wool pea coats or even the puffy parka she'd taken to wearing because the desert was freaking _cold_ this time of year. It was a suit jacket. 

What the hell was a suit jacket doing sitting at her kitchen table like it owned the place?

That was when she heard the snoring. It was light, unobtrusive, more like heavy breathing than like a true snore, but it was enough to capture her attention. It was also enough for her to go suddenly boneless with shock, her glass of water slipping from her hand to shatter on the painted concrete floor. 

It was Phil. Phil, who _had_ been sprawled across the futon in what looked like the S.H.I.E.L.D. equivalent of a high school P.E. uniform, was catapulted out of sleep. She barely had time to blink before his sidearm was drawn and a round was chambered, his nostrils flaring slightly with the hard pull of breath. The fact that the gun was aimed at _her_ (or, more precisely, the origin of the shattered glass that had woke him) wouldn't register until much, much later, well after Phil's aim faltered and the business end of the pistol had dropped.

"Darcy?"

She watched as the frown that had creased his brow eased and the fighting stance relaxed, shaking herself out of the shock that had hit the pause button on her... everything. With so many questions, most of them half-formed and barely deserving of the title, her brain picked out the one that seemed most appropriate and took over, extending the hand that held the pastry box in Phil's direction.

"Pop Tart?"

... Her brain was an idiot sometimes. 

Darcy winced, closing her eyes and shaking her head. That had been so stupid it was painful. "Of course you don't want Pop Tarts. I'm an idiot."

She heard, rather than saw, Phil set his gun aside. "I don't know. Depends on the flavor."

"Frosted Strawberry." Which was the only flavor Jane refused to eat. 

"I think I'll pass for now." Darcy opened her eyes and watched Phil as he joined her, his dress shoes contrasting sharply with the rest of his clothing. "Don't move. There's glass all around you and I don't think your kitties are going to be very helpful."

She stood there and watched as Phil kicked aside the larger pieces and, as if she weighed nothing more than a thought, lifted her out and away from the shattered glass. "That thing has an impressive blast radius. What did you do? Spike it like a football?"

Darcy laughed, but that was all she had for him. The only thought that was able to break through the many layers of hangover and shock and the near certainty that she was experiencing some sort of stress and holiday induced mental break was _Holy shit, his arms are rock hard. I bet he benches two-fifty. At least._ Once she had her feet back on the ground and her butt in a chair (and _those arms_ on the other side of the room, looking for a broom and dust pan), her brain was finally able to catch up and start questioning things. Like what the hell was happening.

"So... you're really here, right? Just making sure, because otherwise I'm probably going to be headed for the looney bin."

"If I'm not really here, this is a very elaborate dream."

"You could totally pull it off, I bet."

"Maybe, but I'm not certain I'd try." Phil found what he was looking for and started to clean the mess she'd made, sweeping up the glass shards that really had scattered pretty much everywhere. Darcy watched him for a moment, knowing she should be up and helping, or at the very least picking the slivered that had embedded themselves in her slippers and socks out, but all she could do was stare. He was really there. In her lab. Well, Jane's lab, but whatever, it was her lab too. 

"I thought you were working."

He shrugged, shooting a questioning glance in her direction, like maybe he was rethinking his decision to come. "I got the time off."

"And you came here?"

Phil sighed softly as he straightened, most of the carnage gathered up in the pan. "I told you I was worried about you. It sounded like you needed a friend."

Hearing that was like a punch to the gut. For all that she spent quite a bit of time complaining about her hair, how unruly it was and how it had a mind of its own, she was glad for it in that moment. She bowed her head and let it fall around her face like a curtain, hiding behind it. She didn’t deserve his friendship. She wanted it, God how she wanted it, but she didn’t deserve it. Darcy was just starting to recount all the ways she was incredibly, completely unworthy of having someone willing to drop everything just because they thought she needed a friend in her life- and then he was there, in front of her, tipping her face up to his. Phil looked more than just concerned. He looked like he was ready to do battle, like he was ready to take out whatever it was that was threatening her. He looked…

He looked like a hero.

“Hey. You okay?”

Darcy shook her head and choked out a “no” before she threw her arms around his neck and pulled Phil into a hug. It took him a moment to recover, but he hugged her back and she thought it was the best Christmas present she’d ever gotten in her entire life.

* * *

Once Darcy’s low moment was mostly squared away (it was a work in progress) and the rest of the glass was cleaned up, she and Phil settled into a comfortable sort of companionship. Though he had asked for, and received, a little more than a week’s worth of vacation, they both knew he wasn’t likely to _actually_ get it. There was simply too much to do and Phil was a man who genuinely loved his work. 

“What I do,” he said that first night as they watched _Firefly_ and ate pizza and drank wine, “it’s more than just a job. It’s necessary. It’s important. It makes a difference.”

“It’s a calling.” 

“Yes, that’s it exactly. It’s a calling. And it doesn’t just _stop_ when I want a few days off.”

“Exactly. The assholes of the world don’t take breaks, so you kind of can’t either.”

“ _Yes. Exactly._ ” He’d stopped then, watching her with an almost peculiar grin. It was... hungry. Predatory almost, and even then, that wasn't the right way to describe it. It was only in place for a moment before he looked away, sipping at his wine once more. "Audrey never got that. I think she understood on an intellectual level-"

"But understanding something and _getting_ something are different things." Darcy watched as Phil nodded, keeping his attention on the television. "You still think about her a lot, don't you?"

He didn't react, but that lack of action was reaction enough. "I think about the wasted potential. In my line of work, it's hard to find the right work-life balance, and for a while I thought it was possible."

"Correction: It's hard for _you_ to find the right work-life balance, because your work _is_ your life, and you thought that maybe being with someone who felt similarly, like Audrey and her music, would make that just a little bit easier. But it didn't."

"No, it didn't."

They sat in silence for a few minutes, watching the story of Serenity play out on the screen, while Darcy considered what she should say, if anything. It wasn't like he was looking for romantic advice from someone half his age, with probably less than half his experience. And yeah, maybe she got him in a way that his ex-girlfriend never had, but they were friends and that was what friends were _supposed_ to do. They were supposed to get you and support you and be there for you when it felt like your world was coming down around your ears. That was the entire reason Phil was sitting beside her at that moment, drinking box wine and watching the best damned television show on the planet. 

So it didn't matter that talking to him was the best part of her day, even if that "talk" was nothing more than a couple of exchanged text messages, and it didn't matter that the little smile he shot her when he caught her looking at him made her heart skip a beat. Maybe her needing a friend wasn't the only reason he'd come to spend Christmas with her in New Mexico. Maybe he needed a friend too, someone who just _got_ him.

Darcy shifted on the futon, scooting close enough to press her shoulder against Phil's as they watched T.V. At some point, she wasn't even sure when, they started holding hands.


	6. Chapter 6

Phil Coulson got three days off before the world decided it needed him more than Darcy Lewis did. Honestly, Darcy was surprised he’d gotten that long.

They were camped out on the futon once more, tearing through episodes of _3rd Rock From The Sun_ , and Darcy’s head was resting in Phil’s lap, his fingers idly combing through her curls while they laughed at the zany antics of Dick, Sally, Harry and Tommy when the call came in. She knew it wasn't a good call when he sighed and tapped her shoulder to get her to move. She obliged, pausing the episode they were on so he wouldn't have to explain the laugh track in the background to whomever was on the other end of the line.

"Coulson."

Phil stood and wandered across the lab, in the general direction of the kitchen. Darcy didn't blame him. The floor to ceiling windows of the Smith Motors building framed the desert around them and the mountains beyond in a way that was particularly breathtaking. She found herself wandering toward them when she was on the phone as well, usually on those rare conversations with her mother. Maybe it was a psychological thing, a desire for the openness beyond the sheet of glass, for the freedom all that space represented.

His voice dropped so Darcy couldn't hear exactly what it was Phil was saying. That didn't matter much, though. There was no mistaking the way his shoulders and neck tensed, destroying the progress several days of steady relaxation had done to ease all that accumulated stress. It was kind of amazing the way stress aged a person and how much good getting rid of it could do, even if it was only for a few days. The years had seemed to melt off him the less they did, not erasing the fine lines that surrounded his eyes, but easing them, bringing a lightness to him that felt more genuine than the placid mask he wore for work.

After a few minutes, he hung up the phone and his head drooped, sticking near the windows for another beat or two. "Darce," he started when he finally turned back to her.

"You have to go." There was no denying it. Hell, she'd known that was likely what was happening from the second the phone rang. "When do you leave?" She wasn't going to ask where he was going or what he was going to have to do, because he wouldn't tell her even if she had. This way she wouldn't be disappointed by his lack of answer and he wouldn't be put into that position in the first place.

"Tomorrow afternoon."

Darcy laughed, leaning heavily on one elbow. "I bet the boss man hated giving you that much. I bet he wants you back, like, yesterday."

Phil snorted his amusement softly, rejoining her on the futon. "I suspect you're right. He did sound apologetic, though. I don't ask for time off often."

"You? A workaholic? Philip, I am genuinely shocked by this information."

"Hopefully this revelation about my character won't cause irreparable psychological damage."

"I'm just going to have to learn to live with this new knowledge. I'll soldier on, somehow." Darcy sat up then, smiling at Phil softly. She was going to miss him when he was gone. A lot. It had only been a few days, yeah, but it was a few days built on months of conversations and maybe she was a stupid little girl who was young enough to be his daughter, but she liked him. _Really_ liked him, as a friend and as a damn attractive man who was funny and caring and thoughtful and sweet. As someone who treated her like she mattered, no matter how ridiculous she was being. She liked talking to him and being around him and she liked how he just got her and she-

Maybe liked wasn't the right word. Maybe it wasn't strong enough to describe what she felt. Darcy wasn't going to go there, though. Not then. Not yet. Not when he was about to leave.

"So one more day, huh?"

"One more day."

Darcy nodded, mouth pursing slightly as she considered their options. There was a lot you could do with one day, but they were still in New Mexico, the land of Fuck All. "You hungry?"

"Getting there."

"Okay, get dressed. We're going out."

That surprised him. Phil's eyebrows shot up toward his hairline. "Izzy's again?"

Darcy rolled her eyes, throwing off the blanket she'd been hiding under while they watched television so she could sit up. " _Not_ Izzy's. I'm sick of Izzy's. I was thinking the Lobo Lounge might be a nice change of pace."

Phil laughed at that, a strong, genuine laugh that lit his face and shook his entire body. Darcy's heart skipped a beat at the sight. "You want to go to the local dive bar?"

"Yes. Yes, I do. Beautiful Puente Antiguo may not have much, but we do have that." She shot him a wink. "I need two hours. You better be ready by then."

"Two _hours_? Wha-"

Darcy silenced him with a finger on Phil's lips, laughing as she shushed him. "Your place is not to question the magic, but to enjoy the results. Two hours." She shuffled off to her room, leaving him on the futon. Two hours was not a lot of time to do everything she needed to do, but it was workable. As long as she found something to wear.

* * *

The two hours Darcy had asked for were up. They'd been up for about twenty minutes but, as she stared at herself in the mirror behind her closet door and put the finishing touches on her make up, she decided that the little bit of extra time had been totally worth it. Her curls were as tamed as they were going to get, which wasn't very, but her make up was on point and that made up for the fabulous lion's mane. What _really_ did the trick was the dress.

She'd been staring at it for months, one of those things she'd packed "just in case" that was collecting dust in the back of the closet, but now she was glad she'd brought it. It was a dark heathered grey, made of a soft jersey material, and it hugged her curves in all the right places. Normally, she tried to hide her figure, having been on the receiving end of way too much unwanted attention, but this was a special occasion and, dammit, if she wanted a certain secret agent to look at her like a _woman_ for once instead of just a friend, then she was going to do what she could to make that happen. And if this dress didn't do the trick, she didn't think anything would.

"Well, Lewis, this is as good as it's gonna get." She blew one last berry colored kiss to her reflection, slipped her arms into a cute, trapeze style wool coat (because pockets were a necessity, especially at the Lobo), then went out to join Phil. 

Darcy was not disappointed. She wasn't sure what she'd expected, really... Phil seemed to live in suits, other than the last few days when they'd both been living in pajamas and sweats and piles of blankets to ward off the cold. Coulson had put on a suit, but it didn't look like one of his MIB suits of varying shades of grey. This was a black pinstripe, cut _remarkably_ well, paired with a black dress shirt. The real surprise was the tie, though. He wasn't wearing one, choosing to leave the top couple of buttons on his shirt undone. It was a good look on him. A _very_ good look on him.

Darcy was screwed. She was so screwed. And also incredibly glad that his attention was on the television, watching a news report on CNN, because that meant she could take an extra few seconds to both admire how delicious he looked and collect herself. The collecting herself was the more important part, obviously, because she wasn't sure she could play off drooling at the sight of him. There was really only one way to interpret that and it was _total insanity_.

"Someone cleans up pretty nicely," she teased, cherry red lips splitting into a grin. 

"What? This old thing?" Phil grinned at the television before pressing the power button on the remote. Then he looked at her. And, just for a second, she thought she saw him just _stop_. 

Yeah, he thought she looked good. She didn't bother hiding the smirk. "Ready to go? You're driving."

* * *

The Lobo Lounge was a blue collar bar for a predominantly blue collar town, so Phil and Darcy’s appearance (or, as they were better known as, "that mouthy scientist girl" and "that government fella") in nice clothes caused a few tongues to start wagging. Darcy wouldn't be surprised if the gossip mill started saying she was sleeping with him for additional funding- which was just no. Not that Phil hadn't been cast in the lead role of more than a few of her fantasies, because he had, there just had to be a line that you didn't cross. For Darcy, that line was selling her body for science. If Jane wanted funding that badly, she could do the do herself.

Being a Monday night in the no man's land between Christmas and New Years, the bar was mostly empty. Puente Antiguo was a small town to begin with, and it had practically emptied as the holidays grew closer but the folks who called this particular speck of desert home were starting to fill all the blank spaces back in. The dim lights in the lounge helped mask how badly in need of a facelift the place was, the tables marked with condensation rings from long dead glasses and scarred with initials carved into every available surface. Darcy headed to a booth at the back of the bar, near the jukebox and the pool table, but far enough away from the bar itself that they could talk with a decent amount of privacy. Phil helped her out of her coat and waited for her to sit before sliding in across from her. If her dress gave him pause, he hid it well behind the pleasant Agent face.

"I never understand people who same side on dates," she said after a few seconds, letting him get situated. "Like, yeah. You're there together, we get it, but unless you're having dinner with Casper the Friendly Ghost, there's no reason to sit on the same side of the booth."

"Darn. There goes my smooth move for the evening." The Agent face was gone and Phil was back, amusement making his eyes dance. "I'll just have to think of something else now."

"You're a creative man, Philip. I have every faith that you'll come up with something."

The bartender took their drink order and, for a few minutes, they lapsed into silence. Darcy fought the urge to pull her phone out of her jacket pocket and, judging by the way Phil's brow was just beginning to wrinkle, he was fighting the same urge. Thankfully, before she was able to say something horribly, horrifically awkward, he saved them.

"You look lovely tonight."

Darcy was thankful for the low lighting, because it hid the blush that colored her cheeks. Mostly. "What? This old thing?" she teased, echoing his statement from earlier. She supposed he hadn't saved them from _all_ of her awkwardness after all. "You're not the only one who cleans up good, Mr. Coulson."

"I think I've been out classed in the cleaning up department, Miss Lewis."

Darcy hid her face behind the much abused menu, just for a moment, so she could grin like an idiot. "I wouldn't say that. There is something inherently alluring about a man who can work a suit the way you do." She dropped the menu just enough to catch his attention, winking once he looked her way. "Some women might even find it pretty damn sexy."

It was Phil's turn to blush, color creeping up his neck into his cheeks and ears. "Only some? I must be losing my touch."

"Tease."

"Everyone needs a hobby."

"Being a tease is your hobby?"

"One of them."

"See, now I'm intrigued. What else does Phil Coulson, international man of mystery, deem worthy of his time?"

"You mean other than Netflix?"

"Of course."

Phil folded up his menu, setting it aside. He leaned in slightly, like he wanted to be closer to Darcy even with the table separating them. "Well, lately I've been completely captivated by beautiful astrophysics interns."

And there was that stupid blush again, and his dumbass friend, stupid grin. "Really? Know many of those?"

"Not so many. Just one."

"Captivated, huh?"

"I'd go as far as enamored."

"That sounds pretty serious."

"Terminal case."

Darcy brushed her hair behind her ear, leaning heavily against the table. "You know, if you're trying to seduce me, it's working."

Phil reached over and took her hand, drawing it slowly toward his lips. "I'm not trying to seduce you, Darcy. I'm trying to woo you." The kiss to her fingers was light, gentle. He drew them across his lips. "Do you feel wooed yet?"

"Getting there." She'd wanted to sound... hell, she didn't know. Not flippant, because for all they joked, there was a thread of seriousness that ran through Phil's words, echoed in his hungry eyes. While talk of wooing her (seriously? Woo?) didn't do much to get her heart racing, that look in his eyes _did_ , turning what she'd intended to be a light response into something much heavier and a lot more breathy, something that told anyone who was paying attention that she was absolutely, without a doubt, being wooed. And if the slight possessiveness that lit in Phil's eyes as he turned her hand over and pressed his lips to the inside of her wrist said anything, it said that he was most certainly paying attention.

His lips curled into a smile against her skin and that mischievous glint returned. "Wooing you would probably be much easier if we were same-siders."

Darcy laughed then, pulling her hand free. Phil was gentleman enough to not try to hold her in place. "That's it, I'm cutting you off."

"That sounds painful."

"Yeah, it's going to be."

 

The evening became the most glorious game of Sexual Chicken that Darcy had ever played. It was a constant dance between them, advancing the line before taking a step or two back to see how the other would react. By the time Phil excused himself for a moment, Darcy assumed to use the restroom, she was certain about only one thing: She had never been so turned on in her entire life and it was confusing as hell. Not the being turned on thing, because that was a fairly easy concept to grasp, but at the mechanics of it. She thought she'd figured out what usually did it for her and Phil had done none of those things but she was still sitting there on her side of the booth, so focused on him that it was distracting, her skin practically aching from wanting to be touched in places other than just her hand. Did S.H.I.E.L.D. teach a class on this? She bet they taught a class on it, because there was no way for anyone, _anyone_ , to just know how to do that naturally.

And the night was still young. That was simultaneously the best and the worst part. There were still hours and hours until sleep would be absolutely necessary, hours which needed to be filled, and Darcy sure as hell knew what she _wanted_ to be doing during those hours but her opinion wasn't the only one that mattered. 

Caught up in her thoughts, Darcy didn't notice at first when Phil came back to the table. She also didn't notice the change in the background music. It wasn't until he slipped in beside her, the fingers of one hand finding hers while the other pushed her hair away from her shoulder, that she realized he'd returned. Not only had he returned, but he'd decided to advance the game by pressing his lips first against her shoulder then slightly higher, working his way toward her neck. 

Christ, she wasn't going to survive this. She was going to spontaneously combust and die with a smile on her face. 

"Come dance with me."

Not a request, but a demand. Normally, she didn't go for that sort of thing, it was a little too Tarzan for her tastes, but this wasn't the kind of situation where she usually found herself getting pissed about being told what to do. This was Phil, not some frat bro at Culver trying to roofie her drink or some brain dead redneck who just wanted to see what she had in her top, so when he tugged at her hand gently, urging her to comply, she went with it and let him lead her to their makeshift dance floor.

"I hope you know what you're doing," she teased as he spun her around slowly before drawing her into his arms. "I've never been much of a dancer."

"I have a good idea."

The song was slow, the melody gentle, so their dancing was little more than an excuse to be pressed close together while they swayed.

"You weren't using the restroom, were you?"

"That's classified."

Darcy chuckled, her arm and hand twisting around Phil's shoulder until it was practically an embrace. "You pick this one on purpose?"

Phil didn't say anything, choosing to press his lips against her temple while they shuffled in the open area between the jukebox and the pool table. He drew her closer, and it broke Darcy's heart. She may play the ditzy intern well, but she wasn't stupid. This was likely the only chance they would ever have to be in this situation, just a man and a woman who were attracted to each other on not just a physical level but also an intellectual one, who had spent months building and maintaining a connection. Their lives were just too different. He was always going to be in demand, always on the move, and even if they _tried_ to make whatever it was they were doing work as an actual real-life thing, the chances of him having the ability to be in one place for any length of time were slim to none.

So this was it. Darcy had one chance with someone who, if she was honest, was irrevocably lodged in her heart. It would be stupid to squander it.

"Phil..." Her voice was a whisper as she pulled back, just enough to look into his face. For a moment, she saw the same sad realization that she'd come to flit through his eyes.

"Darcy, please don't-"

She silenced him with a kiss, arms slipping into a true embrace. If she only had one night, she was going to make the most of it. As Phil’s lips parted against hers, tentatively deepening the kiss, she figured that he agreed.

* * *

It was dark still when Darcy woke, shivering slightly against the chill as Phil lifted the blankets as he slipped back into her bed. She hissed softly first, but his feet brushed against hers as he pulled her back into his arms, the big spoon to her little one, and it rocketed her out of sleep. "Holy hell, your toes are like ice cubes."

He murmured apologies, pulling the thick comforter on her bed up around them. "I'm sorry, sweetheart. I had to make a call."

"...Naked?"

"Well, I turned the heater up too."

Darcy yawned widely, snuggling into the embrace while Phil peppered kisses on her skin. As far as apologies went, it certainly wasn't bad. “What time is it?”

“Early. Five a.m. You should go back to sleep.”

“When do you leave?”

“I have to be at the airfield at one.” He kissed a trail from her shoulder to her neck, fingers dancing along her sensitive side. His teeth nipped gently, but the playfulness evaporated in the space of a sigh. His fingers abandoned their teasing so he could wrap his arm around her, holding her possessively tight. 

Darcy knew how he felt. "I wish you didn't have to go. I mean, I get it, but I still wish you didn't have to." She paused to chuckle softly, turning her head so she could see him out of the corner of her eye. "And not just because of that thing you can do with your tongue. But seriously, if I'd known you could do that, we definitely would have skipped that Blade marathon."

"And miss out on Jessica Biel being an awkward and unlikeable action star? Not on your life."

"Ryan Reynolds totally made that movie."

"Totally."

Darcy closed her eyes and sighed, doing some mental math. The clock was winding down and there was no way to stop it. "So, if I'm counting correctly, I have you for something like five more hours before we absolutely _have_ to get out of bed, right?"

"About that." Phil sounded as bummed as she felt. "... I can try to get back here for New Year's Eve. If you wanted me to."

"If you can, that would be awesome. But don't worry about it if you can't. Saving the world is way more important than watching the ball drop on my TV."

Phil didn't say anything. He just kissed her cheek, her ear. He buried his nose in her hair and breathed her in. His hands roamed over every inch of skin they could get to, like he was committing her to memory. Darcy turned, flipping around so she could face him, her hands getting equally familiar with him as their lips met. Five hours wasn't a lot of time but if it was used wisely, it could feel like an eternity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song they danced to in the bar was "Crazy Love" by Van Morrison. I tried to fit it into the narrative, but it felt awkward, so that got cut.
> 
> Also: slight edit made to correct a couple of spelling errors and a repetitive word. That's what I get for posting a new chapter at 3am.


	7. Chapter 7

Phil didn’t make it back to Puente Antiguo for New Year’s Eve, and that was okay. Darcy was okay with that, because she got something almost as good as him being there; she got _in_. It was like the time they’d spent together, actually physically in each other’s presence, was the key to opening up the enigma that was Phil Coulson. And it wasn’t that he hadn’t been sharing with her before; far from it. She’d heard more about his private life than other (most) women he’d been involved with in the past simply by virtue of being engaging, persistent, and already knowing what it was he did for a living. Not having to hide what one loved was liberating and the physical intimacy they'd shared breathed life into the emotional intimacy that was still developing.

Darcy lost count of how many times she'd fall asleep with him on the phone and wake up hours later to a texted "Sweet dreams, sweetheart", a phrase which never failed to make her heart flutter and bring a smile to her face. She started responding with morning selfies, sleepy eyed and messed up hair, with pillow face and everything. Occasionally, usually on days when he was feeling especially sassy, he'd counter in kind, with a picture of himself in bland, non-descript hotel rooms or conference rooms, making a silly face or wearing a hat. She liked the hat pictures the best, not because hats were a thing that he should regularly engage in, but the opposite. The conversation was always the same, but she didn't tire of it.

» Some people have heads made for hats, babe, but you are not one of them.

**» You can't blame a guy for trying, sweetheart.**

* * *

At Valentine’s Day, she found a tulip bouquet waiting for her along with a necklace in a distinctive blue box that took her breath away. A pair of sterling silver (because she’d mentioned once about being sensitive to gold) intertwined hearts which hung from a delicate chain that was the exact perfect length to hang over her own heart. No note, no card, but one wasn't really needed. She didn’t bother waiting for Jane to be occupied with their work before she dialed her phone and headed up to the roof for a little privacy.

He answered on the first ring.

“Is there something I can help you with, Miss Lewis?”

“Yeah, actually.”

“And what’s that?”

“Well, first of all, if you’re going to flirt with me, at least you can do it in person. Ninja flirting is a turn on, don’t get me wrong, but the next time I walk in to surprise gifts-”

She stopped at the sound of the receiver being picked up, the faint muffled chuckling in the background telling her that not only had he been in the middle of something when she’d called, he’d put off whatever meeting he was in to take her call on speaker phone.

“Miss Lewis, can we talk about this later?”

“Who is that in the background? Is that Sitwell? Ask Mr. Clean if I can rub his head.”

“I’m hanging up now.”

“Phil? I love the necklace.”

He didn’t react, but she knew him by then. He might not have been smiling on the outside, but he definitely was on the inside.

“We'll talk later. Have a good afternoon, Miss Lewis."

Even though his tone held all the same warm inflections that she'd come to expect from Phil, the stern "Miss Lewis" (repeated thrice over) told Darcy that she was going to get The Voice when they finally had their conversation. If she said she wasn't a little excited at the idea, she'd be a liar. 

The Voice was a recent development and something Darcy had never, ever expected. When he'd used it on her, Jane, and Erik while he was jacking their equipment, she hadn't given it much thought. It was mild and unassuming, but still authoritative. The Voice took no shit and expected answers but was still polite about demanding total cooperation. Not submission, mind. He was definitely the one In Charge and whomever The Voice was directed at was expected to comply, but preferably willingly.

Using The Voice to whisper decidedly un-PG-13 things to her had been an unexpected turn on that Darcy was looking forward to exploring further and in great depth, hopefully that evening when Phil called her back. She was convinced that the only reason they hadn't branched into full on phone sex was the lack of privacy on his end. It was hard to be sexy when you knew the call was being recorded and would be analyzed later by your coworkers and subordinates, apparently, so no matter how tempting she tried to be, he always stopped them short and left her with a need that she was forced to fill with her Battery-Operated Boyfriend. The only thing that made her current sexual frustration the least bit bearable was that she'd figured out Phil's tell. There was a little sound he made, nearly silently, when their conversations left him aching for her just as much as she craved him and, damn it, she lived to hear it. It was a sigh, a whispered "sweetheart" and it prickled her skin and sent shivers up her spine in the most pleasurable way. Christ, she loved it. More than should be legal.

Once she’d hung up the phone, she pulled the box containing the necklace out of her pocket and opened it, smiling. She could hear Jane calling for her, asking about the satellite codes again (seriously? They were tacked to the board like they always were), but she ignored the physicist for just a little while longer. Maybe Phil was reluctant to break the seal on sexy phone times, but she had a cute little bra and panties set that, when combined with his Valentine’s Day gift, might just change his mind about that.

“DARCY!”

She sighed and rolled her eyes, snapping the box shut again before slipping it back into her pocket. Later. She would definitely be putting her phone’s camera to use later.

“Jesus, Jane, I’m coming!”

* * *

“So, here’s something funny.”

Darcy’s eyes narrowed as she played with her necklace. It was late ish for them, sometime near midnight. Her bedroom window was open and the early spring air left a chill on her skin, but the sound of the crickets was soothing. Late March in the desert was probably her favorite time of year, because the weather was finally pleasant enough to have a window open for longer than a few seconds. Everything was starting to bloom. “Is it a Shih Tzu dressed like an Ewok?”

“No.”

“Is it a skateboarding dog?”

“It’s not animal-related.”

“Bummer, because animals are freaking adorable.”

“They are, but animals aren’t what I wanted to talk about.”

“Okay then, what is it you wanted to talk about?”

He paused. Darcy thought she knew him well enough to hear how pregnant that pause was, but it didn’t sound like a _bad_ sort of pregnant. It was more of a this-is-a-big-thing sort of pregnant. “I’m going to be back in New Mexico in a few weeks.”

Her heart flipped inside her chest. She’d been right. This was a big thing. “Really? When? April? May?”

“May.”

“Huh. Um… What area of New Mexico are you going to be in? Because it doesn’t look like it on the map, but it’s kind of a big state.”

“Puente Antiguo, actually.”

“So…. here. You’re going to be here.”

“I’m going to be there.”

She waited a moment. And then another moment. And then another moment after that.

“Darcy?”

“You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?”

“Absolutely.” She could hear the grin in his voice and as much as Darcy wanted to at least pretend to be annoyed, she just couldn’t. She was far too into that man to even fake being anything else.

“You’re such a troll sometimes, Phil.”

“You love it.”

Yeah, she did. She loved a lot of things about him, his troll-like tendencies and his fantastic, ridiculous sense of humor not least among them. 

“If you’re going to be in Puente Antiguo next month, maybe we should get dinner or something while you’re here.”

“Miss Lewis, are you asking me on a date?” At least he’d had the courtesy to sound faux-scandalized by the suggestion.

“Nah, I’m just laying the groundwork so I can woo you out of your pants. Again.”

There was another pregnant pause, with the faint rustling of cloth just barely audible in the background. “Who says I plan on wearing any?”


	8. Chapter 8

**He was the closest thing I’d ever had to something, or someone, who mattered. But in the end, close didn’t count. You were either in, or you weren’t.**  
Sarah Dessen, _Along for the Ride_

* * *

Shit has the annoying habit of hitting the fan at the worst possible times. 

Darcy was making little X’s on her calendar, counting down the days until Coulson was supposed to arrive. She spent more time shopping online than actually working, looking for perfect first date attire, which irritated Jane to no end. Did it really count as a first date, though? They’d had that one night at the Lobo and then they’d been doing this phone thing ever since. But even though they’d had a frank conversation about phone rules, purely so he wouldn’t end up caught with his pants down (in a very literal sense) while at work, they’d never really defined what it was they were doing. They were friends, sure, because not every conversation ended up with them getting sweaty and sticky, whispering how they wished the other was with them (though that happened too), but they weren’t quite “dating” either. To Darcy’s mind, you had to actually _see_ someone to date them and their still infrequent video chats didn’t count. So they were in this weird no man’s land that was more than friendship but less than a real relationship, yet neither of them had the desire to spend time with other people.

It was… weird. It was really weird. Of all the guys in the entire world, she’d never have expected _him_ to be the one she could see herself having a future with, but now that she knew Phil Coulson, she couldn’t imagine anything less. She was never going to make it. He was going to be the death of her.

The big day, the day Coulson was supposed to be back in New Mexico on another crazy working vacation, was less than a week out when Jane burst through the door, a face splitting grin stretching from ear to ear. “You have a passport, right? Do you know where it is? We’re going to need it.”

“Why? Are we crossing the border? Are we dropping this whole astrophysics thing to become Coyotes?”

Jane shot her a Look, but that wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, because Jane was always shooting her Looks. “No, we’re not going to get into human smuggling, Darcy. Be real.”

“I’ll try, but being completely fictional is really working for me.” Darcy thought it looked like Jane’s head was going to explode, but that was good for the tiny physicist. She took everything, including herself, way too seriously, so it was part of her job description to help the other woman lighten up every once in a while. “So why do I need my passport?”

Jane smiled- no, she beamed. “We’re going to Norway.”

“... What’s in Norway?”

“A lab we’ve been invited to work at.”

An invitation meant money, right? Because they could use some of that. “That’s pretty cool I guess. When are we leaving?”

“Tonight. They need us there A.S.A.P.”

That answer made Darcy’s heart stop. She swallowed hard, her palms getting clammy. That was sudden. Very sudden. She and Jane had been working on the Einstein-Rosen Bridge stuff for well over a year, so what was the rush? What made them being in norway _now_ so important? Unless... “That’s… Yeah. How long are we there for?”

“... They didn’t say. Maybe a month or so? Maybe more, maybe less, there really wasn’t- Darcy?”

Darcy stopped listening the moment the word “month” had been said. She was out the door and up the ladder to the roof, palming her phone as soon as she was safe. 

Phil answered on the second ring. 

“I’m a little busy at the moment, Miss Lewis.”

“Okay, I see. Well, I’m being dragged out of the country tonight for an indefinite period of time. No big deal. We can talk later.”

She could hear a frustrated puff of breath hit the mic on the other end of the line. It wasn’t long before she could hear the slam of some sort of heavy door, Coulson’s voice echoing slightly as he spoke. “I know you and Dr. Foster are being sent to Tromso, because I arranged it.”

Darcy’s blood ran cold. Shit. “...Is something happening?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Is it _bad_?”

“I can’t tell you that either.”

“So it’s both. Okay.”

There was another frustrated sigh on his side. Darcy waited while Phil decided exactly what he could tell her without violating security protocols. She guessed it wasn't much. “I need you safe, sweetheart. Both of you. Since I can’t spare any manpower for a security detail, that means being far away.”

Okay, that was enough to tell her several things. First of all, he’d broken the Phone Rules. Sweetheart was for home, when he was off the clock and he could just be Phil. It was a private name, just for them. He always used Miss Lewis or, infrequently, Darcy when he was working, that never varied. That he had used sweetheart while he was very, very busy at work (and possibly standing in some sort of stairwell where anyone could hear him, judging by that echo) meant that whatever was happening was bad. The mention of the security detail meant that she and Jane were potentially targets, but the fact that he couldn’t spare the people for it meant that it was an all hands on deck time for S.H.I.E.L.D. Phil, being Phil, would be in the thick of it because he always was when things went down. That was what he'd been trained for, it was what he was good at, it was just what he _did_.

She was going to be sick. Darcy was going to vom because this was so bad.

“Okay. So. Tromso.”

“I really have to go, Darce.”

“I know you do.”

“Text me when you land. I’ll reply if I can.”

“I will.” She gave it a beat. “Hey Phil?”

“Yes, sweetheart?”

_Please don’t let me regret this. Please, please, please._ “I love you. Stay safe.”

Phil paused. It may have only been a second at most, but it felt like an eternity to Darcy and she was ready to kick her own ass over jumping the gun like that, but he put her out of her misery. "I'll do the best I can." There was another heart-stopping moment where Darcy was sure she was going to have to commit seppuku, because there was no coming back from the L word. "I love you too, sweetheart."

She took a few moments to steady herself after Phil hung up, flopping back on one of the dusty lounges they kept on the roof. This entire situation was so incredibly bad the word was beginning to lose all meaning. The only thing she could do was follow the plan Phil had set forth. She and Jane would get out of the way of whatever was happening and, whenever they finally got back from Norway, she was going straight to his office, wherever the hell that was, and demanding answers. Until then, stay the course. Keep her head down. Keep herself and Jane safe. 

Yeah, she could do that.

Back inside the lab, she immediately got to work. All of their data was saved to drives, but they would need to be packed and shielded for the trip, and it was a hell of a long flight to Tromso.

* * *

“Do you know how long we’ve been traveling, Jane?”

“Please, Darcy, don’t start.”

“It’s been twenty nine hours, Jane.”

“I am very aware of how long it’s been, Darcy.”

“Do you? Do you really? Because I’m pretty sure my ass is never going to recover from this trip.”

_“Really?”_

“Yes, really. My ass has gotten compliments in four time zones. Five if you count that lay over in London, which I don’t, because I’m not sure if that guy was talking to the dude next to me. His ass was pretty epic. I might be a little jealous.”

“We’ll be there in two hours. Why don’t you just play with your iPod?”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“It’s dead.”

"What about your phone?"

"I am at a pitiful 30% and I am saving that for when we land."

"... I'm going to ask the flight attendant for a coloring book or something."

* * *

_1100 local time / 0500 EST ___  
» Hey, it’s me.  
» We just landed in Tromso  
» My iPod died and I spent the last 2 hours driving Jane nuts.

_1330 local time / 0730 EST_  
» I hope everything is okay.  
» Text me when you can, yeah?

_1445 local time / 0845 EST_  
» You know what’s in Tromso, Phil?  
» NOTHING. NOTHING IS IN TROMSO.  
» Unless you’re into churches and wooden buildings.  
» And languages you can’t speak.  
» Just bridges and boats and the Northern Lights.  
» Those are actually kind of pretty.

_1700 local time / 1100 EST_  
» The lab here is half decent. Lots of space.  
» Nothing but idiots, though.  
» Jane is going to eat these people alive  
» Don't worry, I'll take pictures.

_1800 local time / 1200 EST_  
» Phil, the radio silence is starting to freak me out  
» JSYK.

* * *

Darcy gave the lab three hours to get their computer access squared away before she stepped in and did it herself. Really, she probably should have done that to begin with because these “professionals” couldn’t find their own asses in the dark with a flashlight, both hands, and a map, much less the admin console on their own network. And then, as if the delay wasn't insult enough, there was the “firewall” they’d used to limit her internet access. Pathetic. It was pathetic. And if she hadn't been getting desperate for news, because shit going down would be the only reason Phil wouldn't respond to her at all, she would have called their attempts laughable. It was nothing for her to squeeze past it and get to what they were trying to hide.

… Which happened to be an alien attack on New York. Fuck. And then things got even worse when the news feed zoomed in on Thor and Jane started to freak the fuck out. Of course the big guy came back to kick some ass and, if the way he was swinging that hammer around, calling the lightning to fry some of those cockroach looking bastards was any indication, Phil was right to send Jane away. If she'd been anywhere near the action, Thor would have been pissed. 

The lab monkeys made distressing sounds as she and Jane watched everything unfold, but Darcy ignored them and their weirdly accented English. When one of them tried to protest, she picked up her empty coffee cup and waved it in the man's face, not even bothering to look at which one was protesting her "abuse" of their network. "Hey. This cup isn't going to fill itself. Chop chop, Science Boy, Mama's busy."

"Darcy," Jane whispered as the man took the mug and slunk away. "I think that was the Director of Research."

"So?"

"You just made him get you coffee. The _Director_ of Research for the entire facility."

"...So? He owes us and he knows it. They never should have tried to keep this from us."

Jane quieted down after that and so did he lab workers, letting the American women watch the events of the battle in peace.

* * *

_0000 local time / 1800 EST_  
» Seriously Coulson if you don’t text me back something  
» ANYTHING  
» I'm going to use all of my considerable talents and wiles to track you down  
» Don’t think I can't do it, because I can and I will

_0200 local time / 2000 EST_  
» I just need to know that you're okay

* * *

After two days of texting, Darcy decided to make good on her promise to track Phil's ass down. All she had to do in order to accomplish that was to hack SHIELD. Which, as it happened, was only just within her capabilities. Barely. And even then, she had to call in assistance from some friends who were getting involved with a hacktivist group called the Rising Tide in order to find the right exploit. (She may have been a poor college student, but when her friend said it was some chick living in a van in LA that got her in, she sent along a gift card to Starbucks. One that she actually paid for so she knew it would work. It never hurt to make nice with the talent.)

Everywhere she turned, she got shut down. His files were restricted, locked down and buried under layer after layer of encryption until the only thing Darcy could discover was that there was something there, but _no one_ had access to it. It made sense, sort of. He was probably one of the few public faces of a very private entity. His shit _had_ to be locked down so people like her didn't try to exploit it.

It wasn't until later that Darcy realized that the tables had turned between her and Jane. There was no work happening in the lab. Of the available systems, half were streaming news feeds, keeping the women up to date on the developments in New York and around the globe. Darcy wheeled herself between the rest of the systems, working on the SHIELD issue on some, using others for communication. She napped, but she didn't really sleep. She nibbled, but she didn't really eat. It wasn't until Jane slipped a room temperature Pop Tart into one hand and a fresh cup of coffee that she stopped to appreciate the irony of the Kept taking care of the Keeper.

"Thank you, Jane."

"You're welcome, Darce."

Jane paused, hovering. Hovering wasn't a thing Jane did, so Darcy figured one of two things: either she looked _really_ bad (which, considering the aforementioned lack of sleep and food, was a very likely possibility) or Jane wanted to talk to her about something. After catching a glimpse of herself in a blackened screen, she had to concede that both also had a high probability.

"Whatever you're going to say, just spit it out already."

Jane sighed, teeth worrying her lower lip for a moment before she spoke up. "I know you're busy, and I didn't want to distract you... but I'm going to New York. Thor was here. He might still be here, but I don't know if he is because I'm not having any better luck with SHIELD than you are. So. I'm going."

Darcy nodded thoughtfully, sipping at her rapidly cooling coffee. It made sense. It was a good plan, sort of. It was the opposite of safe, but after days with no word from Phil specifically or S.H.I.E.L.D. in general, maybe safe wasn't the way to go.

"When do we leave? LaGuardia took a fair amount of damage; some of the terminals and a couple of the runways are closed down, so they're shuffling all the traffic through JFK and Newark."

Jane smiled, but the emotion didn't quite reach her eyes. Darcy didn't blame her for it. It was a stressful time for everyone and being stuck in the far northern reaches of Norway wasn’t helping.

"See where you can get us in. If we have to fly into Philadelphia and drive the rest of the way, I'm fine with that." She started to walk away and let Darcy work on getting them home. "And use the travel card S.H.I.E.L.D. gave us. They sent us here, they can get us home."

Darcy chuckled, and started looking into Business Class and higher seats. If they were going to spend another day and a half in various planes and airports, at least it would be comfortable this time.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You might need some tissues on hand for this chapter.

By the time she and Jane finally made it back the the US, Darcy was ready to collapse. For the better part of a week, she'd gotten less than an average of four hours of sleep a night and it was definitely showing. She was convinced that her blood was at least 40% caffeine because the constant flow of coffee and cola was the only thing keeping her upright long enough to make sure she and Jane were headed in the right direction.

What a nightmare this trip had been. It made Thelma and Louise's disastrous road trip seem like an all-expenses paid vacation by comparison. Not even the slightly roomier seats in most of their flights had made up for it. Not when the layovers in Oslo, Munich, and Frankfort had been long enough that the airlines had offered to get them hotel rooms and pay for the transfers. 

"There's nothing we can do, Miss," one sympathetic ticket agent had said. "There's nothing sooner."

Thirty seven straight hours was a long time to worry about someone. It as a long time to wonder if they were injured. Or dead. Or if their phone had become a casualty to whatever fighting had happened and that was why they hadn't texted back or returned any of thousand calls. It seemed, however, to be the perfect amount of time to come to terms with whatever was ahead, because by the time they landed in Philadelphia, both Jane and Darcy were ready for answers. It didn't matter much what the answers were by that point. They just wanted them.

In Philadelphia they'd rented a car and driven into New York. In New York, they'd found Erik in a hospital, surrounded by SHIELD agents, but not much when it came to answers and even less when it came to resources. Jane managed to call in a couple of chips with the director of the Hayden Planetarium and get them a place to "work" for a day, but really it was just a pit stop, a place for them to recharge batteries both physical and emotional, and an opportunity for Darcy to check in with her friends in the Rising Tide. Phil's name still wasn't on any of the "official" casualty lists, but Darcy wasn't buying it. He wouldn't have just cut off contact unless something happened. It just wasn't him.

With New York a dead end, they drove back toward Philadelphia, bypassing it on the way to the much smaller town of West Chester. Bill Lewis didn't know what to do with his too-smart-for-her-own-good daughter and that went double for Jane, but when the two women showed up on his doorstep looking exhausted and like they were ready to fall over, he wasn't going to turn them away.

Jane was curled up on the bed in her father’s guestroom, dead to the world, but Darcy was having a hard time finding the same peace, so she slipped out onto the small patio, tucking her feet up under her on the creaky deck chair. Night time was different in Pennsylvania than it was in New Mexico, and night time was different in New Mexico than it was in Virginia, but no matter where it fell, it was no less peaceful. After all the traveling and hunting for information, it was nice to have a few minutes just to decompress. 

“You look like something’s bothering you, kid.”

Darcy smiled up at her father as he joined her, taking the other, slightly more precariously assembled chair. Though he was staring down seventy, her father was still as active and vital as men closer to half his age, even if he’d put on a few extra pounds over the last couple of years. She figured it was probably his girlfriend’s cooking. Maureen had never met a potato she didn’t try to fry.

“It’s been a _long_ week, Popsicle. And it’s just going to get longer.”

He nodded, leaning back in the chair and making it creak even louder. If it broke, Darcy was going to laugh before she helped him up. “Are you sure long weeks are worth the credits you’re getting for this internship?”

She sighed, running a hand through her hair. She was going to have to see what kind of shampoo Maureen kept and borrow some, because the grease ball on her head was getting out of control. “It’s… It’s really difficult to explain.”

“Try me.”

“I don’t know how much I _can_ tell you. I kind of signed... a Non-disclosure Agreement. So I know I can’t talk to the press, but I’m not sure where parents fall in there.”

“They made you sign one of those for a science internship? I don’t know about you, kid, but that sounds a might sketchy to me.”

“Yeah, I know it does.” She sighed again, scrubbing her face with her hands. “But it’s really not as bad as it sounds. In most ways. In some ways it’s kind of worse.”

Darcy pulled her hands away and looked to her father, watching the way his mouth pursed under his thick mustache that was just starting to be peppered with grey. “Well, why don’t you start with why you signed a Non-disclosure Agreement and why your boss, who seems like a very nice woman, would ask that of you and then we’ll go from there.”

“It wasn’t Jane that had me sign it, it was SHIELD. And I signed it because the thing that happened in New York? It wasn’t the first time aliens have come here brawling.”

Once she started, it was like Darcy couldn’t stop. She’d always been close to her father, and having to hide so much of her life from him for so long had taken a bigger toll on her than she’d thought. So she laid it all out, every helpless, horrible, fantastic, completely fucking weird moment of it, from Thor’s Pop Tart Decimation to the Norway Trip From Hell. 

To Bill Lewis’s credit, he didn’t interrupt his daughter as she spun a tale that, a week prior, he would never have believed. Much like the young woman sitting beside him, who favored him in so many ways beyond just the blue eyes and dark, unruly hair she had inherited from him, he sat back and absorbed what she had to say before he reacted to any of it, waiting for all the relevant information before he formed an opinion.

“First of all, kiddo, we’re going to call Uncle Dave in the morning. If you’re in town, he’s going to want to see you, and secondly, if this SHIELD thing is as big as you say it is, then we want to make sure you’re protected.”

“Uncle Dave is a divorce attorney, Dad. I don’t think his particular branch of the legal system is going to help me much.”

“Maybe not, but he’s friendly with the state Attorney General. And that’s someone who has some pull.”

“Pull for _what_ , though?”

“Well, to make sure they don’t sue you for everything you just told me, for starters. And then to make sure you get on their payroll. If they’re sending you places because they’ve put you in danger, even inadvertently, then you should be compensated.”

Darcy didn’t hide the tired, frustrated sigh that escaped her. She loved her father, and she loved that he looked out for her, but that was _so_ not what she was hoping he’d take away from everything she’d said. "That isn't the point at all, Dad."

His gaze sharpened, like a hawk. "Then what is the point, kiddo? Why are you working yourself half to death over this?"

She had to stop for a second and ask herself that very same question and she had to be very honest with her answer. "... I'm worried about my friend. Not just the guy I'm into, but my _friend_. And I think something bad happened to him, he might even be dead, but I'm not getting any answers and I want them."

Bill nodded and Darcy nodded with him. He always did know how to help her get to the root of the matter at hand, probably because she was just like him and he was self-aware enough to know what questions he would have to ask himself. "And where do you think these answers are, Darce?"

"Their headquarters."

Bill grumbled softly, watching her carefully. "That's no small fish, sugar. Just make sure you're not biting off more than you can chew."

"I want answers about Phil almost as much as Jane wants answers about Thor, and she's a hell of a lot louder when she puts her mind to it. I'll let her raise the stink because they'll be more likely to cave to her than they will to me."

Her father smiled at her then, dimples flashing and making him seem like a much younger man. "That's my girl. That's using your head."

Darcy tried to smile back but she was only marginally successful. She hadn't let herself entertain the notion that maybe Phil hadn't survived what went down in New York, but now that she'd said it aloud it was all too real a possibility. Hell, it wasn't just a possibility anymore, it was a probability. Death would be the only thing that would have kept him from at least letting her know that he was alive. "I think… I think you would have liked him, Pops."

"Who would I have liked?"

"Phil. My friend."

"And why would I have liked him?"

"Because he was a good man.” She shook her head. “ _Is_ a good man.” Because she wasn’t quite ready to give up on him. Not entirely. “He always tries to do what's right, even if it's hard."

"That sounds admirable." Bill reached over with one of his feet, nudging her, trying for a more sincere smile by teasing the crap out of her. "Tell me about him. Is he young and handsome and does he make your heart flutter?"

His tone of voice got a little laugh out of her and Darcy pushed his feet away, playing. "He's handsome, like really handsome, but not so much with the young. He's... older."

"How much older is ‘older’?"

Uh oh. She didn’t care too much for the warning in her father’s voice. "... Older?"

"Darcy Christine."

"Oh no, you do _not_ get to judge me here. There's like, what? Twenty years between you and Mom?"

Bill harrumphed, clearly not liking where this was going. "...Nineteen and three quarters."

"Nineteen and three quarters is almost twenty, for the record, so you can't judge me for what is obviously a genetic predisposition."

Bill stood and stepped in front of Darcy, taking her chin in his hand so she had no choice but to face him. "I can and will judge you, because I am your father. And as your father, I don't have to _like_ that you are involved with an older man in order to accept it." He leaned in and pressed a scratchy kiss to her forehead. “Get some sleep. You need it.”

“I will,” she promised, as he released her and headed into the townhouse. “Love you, Popsicle.”

“Love you too, kiddo.”

* * *

The next morning, Darcy woke to her uncle watching her like a creeper, grinning.

"Christ, weirdo, don't you have anything better to do?" she grumbled, burying her head under her pillow. 

"You are a ray of sunshine in the morning, you know that?" Uncle Dave was, arguably, her favorite uncle. He was much younger than her father, still in his mid-fifties, but like his elder brother he kept a youthful attitude. Darcy thought it was at least partially because of the pretty blondes he pursued, each one younger than the last. She wasn't going to judge, though. It was his life.

"Out of the last week, I've spent three days on a plane and two days in a car. I think I'm allowed to be a little grumpy when I'm woken up at-" She squinted at her phone, whimpering. "-Eight in the morning. This is Hell. I am in Hell."

"Aww, and here I thought I was doing something nice for my favorite niece." That was when he pulled a rabbit out of his hat- or more precisely, a coffee from behind his back. 

"Is that what it I think it is?"

Uncle Dave's grin just got wider. "Yes it is."

"Extra caramel?"

"And extra whipped cream. Who loves you, Darcy?"

"Uncle Dave does, because he's the best uncle in the history of uncles." Darcy was a coffee aficionado and had been ever since her uncle had first bought an espresso machine and, on a saturday when her dad had to work and her regular babysitter was unavailable, had taught her how to use it. That machine had been her version of an Easy Bake Oven. But for all the prevalence of nationwide chains (seriously, there wasn't a Starbucks in Puente Antiguo, but they had a Gloria Jean's), the best coffee she'd ever had in her life was in a tiny local shop near Dave's office. "Did you bring me their beans? Please say you brought me their beans."

"Do I ever _not_ bring you their beans?"

Darcy sat up so she could drink her coffee, moaning happily at the first sip. “Best. Uncle. Ever."

Dave let her get a couple of sips in before he got down to business. "Your dad said you were in something pretty deep."

"Well... I think pretty deep is a overstatement. Marginally deep is more accurate. I'm just this side of the deep line."

"He mentioned a shadowy government agency and a boyfriend and an NDA."

"That's... partially accurate."

"Which part?"

"The shadowy government agency and the NDA."

"So you're not breaking the law in order to gain access to their servers to see if your not-boyfriend is on the casualty lists for the New York thing?"

"Oh, that part is completely true."

Dave sighed and rubbed his forehead, like talking to her was giving him a headache. It probably was. She had that effect on a lot of people. "Darce, honey, you have to stop that. Like, today. Anything you're passively doing to get access needs to be halted."

She shook her head. "That's not going to happen."

"It has to."

"It's just not, Uncle Dave, I'm sorry." She shrugged, setting the cup of coffee aside. "I either find the data I'm looking for, or I'm driving to D.C. and camping out in their lobby until someone talks to me. Phil-"

"Old Phil. Your unboyfriend. The Friend Boy."

"He's not _that_ old."

" He's older than you, that's enough to make him old."

"Phil would do the same for me. If I was... I don't know. Incommunicado. Or if I was missing. He would tear the world apart looking for me. I can't do any less for him."

"This old man you're only kind of seeing means that much to you?"

"Okay, seriously, knock it off with the old jokes. He's younger than you."

"Fine. Now answer the question."

"Yes, alright? Yes, he means that much to me."

Dave sat back and watched her for a couple of moments, nodding to himself. Under the smartass exterior, Darcy's uncle was a shrewd man and an excellent judge of character. Once upon a time, he'd been an Assistant District Attorney, but the corruption he'd encountered had worn him down. That was when he'd switched specialties and gotten into family law. "And what about Sleeping Beauty in the guest room? Please tell me she's single."

Darcy couldn’t help but laugh. “Jesus, horndog. _No._ You stop right there.”

“What? I’m good looking! I’m young! Ish.”

“First of all, she’s married to her work. Seriously. And secondly…” Darcy grinned, thinking about the muscle-bound pseudo-Nordic god that Jane was chasing after. “Jane is kind of into this big, dumb Labrador of a man. Or alien. He might be an alien.”

“You know, a week ago I would have questioned your sanity.”

Darcy got quiet at that. Had it really only been less than a week since the world had gone completely haywire? It was bizarre the way that it felt like it had just happened and, at the same time, how it had been forever ago. A week prior she had been texting Phil, teasing him about how she wasn't sure if they'd actually _go_ anywhere on their date because she had been considering just taking him to bed and keeping him there for as long as she could manage and he'd said that he'd thought that idea had merit and maybe they should make that some sort of plan and-

God, it hurt too much to think about. The pain cut like a knife and her face screwed up, eyes shut tight, and before she knew it, Uncle Dave was there with his arm around her shoulders, doing his best to comfort her.

"Hey. Hey now. What's wrong? Talk to me."

"I just need to know," she sighed, leaning into the side hug while she blinked away the tears that threatened. "Whether he's languishing away in a hospital somewhere or if he didn't make it- I just need to know, because the not knowing is going to drive me insane."

Dave sighed along with her, giving Darcy a squeeze and a kiss to the top of her head. "Listen... stay here with your dad today. Take a nap. Maybe think about taking a shower, because your head smells like cheese. Give me every contact you have for this agency your man friend works for and let me make a few calls, see if I can't pull a few strings." 

She nodded along with him, thinking a nap and a nice long bubble bath sounded like a slice of heaven. In all honesty, Darcy was more tired than she'd ever been in her life. She was worn down from travel and from worry, so a day of rest was required. Even if Jane would bitch about it when she woke up. "Best Uncle Ever."

* * *

Predictably, Jane wasn't pleased at the idea of spending a day doing nothing when there was a Norse Alien/God that was possibly still here (though the probability of that being true dwindled by the hour), but when Uncle Dave promised to do what he could to get them some information before they jumped back into a car and started driving willy nilly across the country, it seemed to assuage her to a degree. She let Darcy bully her into a bubble bath and she let Bill dad at her about eating actual meals at meal times and not just grazing on whatever Darcy put in her hand over the course of the day. 

"Your family is ridiculous," she groused into a glass of wine while they sat on the patio. Darcy and Jane had offered to help prepare dinner, but Maureen had said absolutely not, they were guests and if they wanted to help, they could help with the dishes after they ate. Darcy liked Maureen, her not-quite-stepmother. She was nice without being a pushover, firm without being pushy, and she made her father happy. He lit up every time they were in the same room and his eyes followed Maureen when she left, even though they'd been together for close to a decade. But Darcy didn't think her father would ever get married again. It had been a stretch for him to wed her mother, and how did that old saying go? Once bitten, twice shy?

"Yeah, they are." Darcy wasn't going to fight Jane on that point. "But we Lewises are a _helpful_ kind of ridiculous, so. There's that at least."

"Anything from your uncle yet?"

"Not yet... But if he comes up with the same nothing we've gotten, I think we should head down to Washington. To SHIELD headquarters. If anyone is going to have answers for us, they're going to have them there and they won't be able to ignore us forever."

Jane nodded, still contemplating her glass. "I thought the same thing." They sat in silence for a few moments, Darcy watching the sunset while Jane’s gaze was turned inward. “I just don’t understand, Darce. He said he’d be back. He _swore_ he’d be back. If he’s here, why hasn’t he come?”

Darcy barely repressed a sigh.”Sometimes there are things more important than love, Jane. And I’d say that protecting the planet the woman you love is on from an alien invasion is a pretty important thing.” She set her glass down on the overturned milk crate her father used as a table (sometimes it was like her dad was still living in the 70s because where did you even _get_ red plastic milk crates anymore?) and turned to look at the other woman. “Look. You miss him and I’m sure he misses you too, but you have to cut the guy a little slack. He’s got a job to do. You have to let him do it, even if it means stepping back… And trust me, I know how hard that is for you, because you’re a front-and-center kind of person.”

Jane didn’t look pleased, but she didn’t argue, and Darcy was fine with that. Sometimes people needed the obvious pointed out to them.

They were in the middle of dinner when Dave returned, a shit-eating grin on his face. “Mo, did you make your homemade spaghetti sauce? Because you know I love your homemade spaghetti sauce.”

Jane was at attention as soon as he entered the room, and Darcy knew by the look on her face that she was going to ask for answers immediately. She reached over and touched her friend’s arm. “Let him eat first,” she said quietly. “We have time to talk. If it was bad, he wouldn’t have looked so… chipper.”

“How do you know?” Jane hissed her response, looking tense enough to snap in half.

“Trust me. If he were faking it for our benefit, he’d be turned up to eleven. This is normal Dave, so we should be cautiously optimistic.”

That turned out to be the right play, because Dave had barely started to dig into his massive pile of spaghetti before he shot a wink at Jane (ugh) and turned to his niece, that shit-eating grin smeared with sinfully delicious spaghetti sauce. “Who loves you, Darcy?”

“Does Uncle Dave love me?”

“Uncle Dave _does_ love you.” He reached into the pocket on his polo shirt and pulled out a slip of paper. “I owe the DA a couple of rounds on the links, but I got you a contact who _will_ answer your call and, with any luck, be able to give you some answers.”

Darcy wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth, so she took the slip of paper with a number scribbled on it. “Do you lawyer types seriously trade favors by playing golf?” Jane took the paper almost immediately. Darcy didn’t fight it. “I thought that was a Hollywood thing.” 

“It is and it isn’t.” Dave took a big bite of his garlic bread and chewed thoughtfully. “But in this case, I’m going to have to lose horribly and pay the greens fees.” He shot another wink in Jane’s direction. “Small price to pay to get to play Prince Charming for once.”

Jane looked up sharply at the mention of the fees, absently passing the note back to Darcy. “Wait, what? You’re going to have to _pay_ for this? You have to let me pay you back.”

Dave just shook his head. “Nope, your money is no good here.”

“But you shouldn’t have to-”

“Dr. Foster, stop. Seriously. You’re a friend of my favorite niece-”

Darcy snorted loudly at that. “I’m your _only_ niece.”

Dave didn’t let her comment stop him. “-and we don’t charge good friends for favors. So put that thought right out of that beautiful head.”

Darcy was on the verge of groaning and telling Dave to knock it off, but she didn’t have to. Bill kicked his brother under the table, making the younger man yelp. “She is involved with someone and _you_ have a girlfriend. A couple of girlfriends. Behave.”

"I'm being a _perfect_ gentleman, thank you, but if the lady feels like I've overstepped, then I will apologize." Dave turned his megawatt smile onto Jane and it was all Darcy could do not to roll her eyes. "Do I owe you an apology?"

Thankfully, it looked like Jane was starting to figure out that it was _all_ Lewises who communicated primarily through varying levels of sarcasm and wild gesticulations, not just her assistant. "You're fine for now, but I won't be held responsible for what my boyfriend does to you if he ever finds out. And he has a magical hammer, so... flirt at your own risk."

Hearing that amount of sass from Jane was enough to start Darcy giggling and it took a long time for her to stop.

* * *

Jane and Darcy decided that waiting until the morning to call the number on the paper was a stupid idea. Of course, that decision was helped along with a couple of glasses of wine, so it may not have been the best they'd ever made. They didn't get too much time to ponder this because the owner of the number they'd dialed and put on speaker answered quickly.

"Sitwell. This had better be an emergency."

Darcy and Jane both gaped like fish for a moment, eyes and mouths wide open. Sitwell sounded annoyed and tired and it was really no wonder. 

"If you don't speak up, I'm closing this connection and going back to sleep."

Darcy gave Jane a shove and started flailing her hands at the phone, whispering "Go, go!" That seemed to snap her out of it.

"Uh... sorry, Agent Sitwell. This is Dr. Jane Foster, we met in New Mexico?"

"I remember you, Dr. Foster. What can I help you with?" There was no mistaking the sigh in his voice, like this wasn't a conversation he wanted to have because it was probably above his pay grade. Darcy knew that sigh well.

"Oh good. Um, I was sort of hoping you could tell me whether or not Thor was still here."

"I'm not really at liberty to say."

"I'm not asking for his location, Agent Sitwell. I'm just asking if he's still _here_."

There was a pause on the line, filled only with the crackle of a crappy connection. "I'm sorry to say that he isn't, Dr. Foster. He went home after he was finished in New York." Jane deflated at that, like a balloon that had been inflated to just shy of the popping point and then had all the air in it released, all limp and flat. "Is there anything else I can help you with?"

Jane started to say no, but Darcy smacked her in the arm, saying "Ask about Phil!" in a loud stage whisper. Jane gaped and smacked her back before answering. "Actually, there's one more thing, Agent Sitwell. Agent Coulson is my contact with you people. We- I mean, _I_ have been trying to get in touch with him, but he isn't answering."

There was another pause and when he spoke up, Sitwell sounded almost sad. "...Is Miss Lewis with you, Dr. Foster?" Christ, that wasn't a good sign at all.

"Yes, she is."

"Agent Coulson was injured." Okay, injury would mean hospital and hospital meant getting better, right? "Unfortunately, he didn't make it."

The world went blank for Darcy after those words. She didn't pass out, but she wished she had. She wished she could. Everything around her was swimmy and brightly colored and all she could hear was the pounding of her own heartbeat in her ears, the hiss of her own breathing. 

He was gone. Her Phil was gone. And maybe one day she’d be able to look back and think about how it was how he would have wanted to go, making a difference, protecting the world from the much weirder world, but right now that was nothing but horseshit and those words held no comfort for her. Because Phil was gone and there was no coming back from that.

She felt, rather than saw or heard, Jane jump off the bed. Maybe an hour passed, maybe a minute, but the next thing she was consciously aware of was hearing her father’s voice. Darcy looked up and she kept her cool for a whole five seconds before the dam broke and the tears started to fall. “Daddy?” She sobbed once before he was across the room, pulling her into his arms.

* * *

The sobbing stopped after a while, but the tears kept falling. Darcy didn’t know how to make them stop or even if she wanted to. She’d thought she’d lost before, thought she’d had her heart broken, but those wounds were nothing compared to this. This was ugly and raw and it left her feel like she’d been torn to ribbons and left with her soul exposed. The tears didn’t help it, didn’t make the pain go away, but they made the pain somehow more tolerable.

Jane had packed up and left days earlier. Darcy wasn’t sure exactly when, but she didn’t blame Jane for going. There were things that needed to be done and if Thor was able to come and go once, then maybe her work would be more successful. Maybe the wormholes would stabilize finally, given everything Erik had learned about the process while he’d been under Loki’s control. 

“If you want me to stay, though, I’ll stay. Just say the word.”

Jane was sweet to offer it, but she was wasting her time here. Grieving or not, Darcy knew it. “Go, Jane. You’ve got work to do.”

So she’d left, with the promise to keep in touch, and then days just stopped having any kind of meaning for Darcy. She slept when she wanted and ate when she wanted. Uncle Dave had come by once to try to cheer her up, but their normal banter fell flat and he’d gone home disappointed.

A week passed before Darcy got a phone call she actually bothered to answer. 

“Miss Lewis? This is Agent Sitwell.”

Oh, joy. “Hi Agent Sitwell. What’s up?”

He cleared his throat and she could hear a door close in the background. “I just wanted to call and touch base with you. I know that you and Agent Coulson were close…” Darcy’s throat closed up at that, but her eyes stayed dry. She was all cried out. “Some of his case files were given to me, and I made sure that the New Mexico file was one of them.”

It took her a moment to respond, and her voice sounded thick even to her. “Good. I’ll let Jane know”

“I’ve already spoken to Dr. Foster. She was unsure whether or not you’d be returning as her assistant, so I thought I’d contact you separately. Just in case.”

Jane wasn’t the only one who was unsure about that. There were just too many memories in the lab. Darcy wasn’t sure if she could face them yet. Or ever. “Well, thanks. I appreciate it.”

“One more thing, Miss Lewis.” Sitwell stopped, like he was trying to figure out the best way to phrase what he wanted to say. That was weird, but kind of a good weird. She figured it meant he was trying to be tactful. “Phil’s family is having a memorial service for him in two days. It’s in Boston. I plan on attending. If you’d like to go, I would be happy to escort you.”

And, there were the tears. Maybe she wasn’t cried out after all. “I don’t-”

“Just think about it, Miss Lewis. I knew Phil a long time- I don’t think he’d want you to be alone for this.”

“Thank you, Sitwell.”

“You’re welcome, Darcy.” He cleared his throat, getting back to business. “If there’s anything you need, you have my number.”

Darcy thought about what Sitwell had said for hours. He was right. Phil wouldn’t have wanted her to be alone and he wouldn’t have wanted her to cut herself off from the world, like she’d been doing. Healing was a slow process, but she had to start somewhere and the best somewhere to start was by saying goodbye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a reference, [THIS](http://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/5395/A-Marvel-Cinematic-Universe-Timeline) is the general timeline I'm following for this fic, so there is a fairly large time jump coming up.


	10. Chapter 10

**It’s as if when you love someone, they become your reason.**  
David Levithan, _Every Day_

* * *

## November, 2013

In retrospect, kissing the intern wasn’t the best decision she’d ever made, but in Darcy’s defense, he _did_ smack some bitches with a car for her, so she felt like she owed him something to say "Thanks for keeping me alive". However, if she’d known that he couldn’t separate a kiss from "please follow me around like a fucking puppy all the god damned time from now until eternity" she probably would have given the idea a little more thought before laying one on him. That was kind of how retrospect worked though. Twenty-twenty hindsight and all that jazz.

There were a lot of things that she would change about the whole Dark Elves drama if she'd known that it was going to culminate in giant alien psychopaths (Were there any other kind of aliens though? Because seriously, other than Thor and his bros, she was starting to have some doubts.) crash landing their spaceship in the middle of a university. She would have kept a closer eye on Jane, because that woman knew how to get herself into some serious trouble. She would have worked harder to get in contact with SHIELD, because if she had maybe there wouldn't have been quite so much damage to the area. And she _definitely_ would have kept her lips far, far away from her intern. Did other scientists have that problem? Probably not. She was barely a scientist and in general her problems tended to be... unique. If someone had told her three years earlier that this was how her life was going to turn out, she would have done like that Pink song and punched that motherfucker right in the face.

This new and strange trajectory her life had taken had started at Phil's (god, how it still hurt to think about him. Not as bad as it once had, but it was like a broken bone that never really healed completely) memorial service. Her father and uncle had offered to go with her, but she'd turned them both down. It wasn't that she didn't want or need their company. She felt guilty about disrupting their lives further. Bill Lewis was "in a transitional period", so he was switching focus from contracting to inspections, and the classes were a strain. And Uncle Dave had a law practice and clients and a staff... If he didn't work, his people didn't get paid and it was a shitty time to be unemployed. So she'd thanked them and gone into the guest room to call Sitwell back and take him up on his offer of a ride.

As it turned out, Sitwell's offer hadn't been completely altruistic. Who'd have thought that the guy trained in espionage was holding his cards close to his chest, right?

"You have a knack with computers, don't you Miss Lewis?" he'd said as they sat in the rear of a taxi, heading toward a small airfield where, apparently, they were going to take a plane to Boston, where Phil was from. Darcy was about done with planes, but if SHIELD was footing the bill, she wasn't going to be too choosy. 

She glanced over at Sitwell, who was working a little too hard to _not_ watch her, then turned her attention back to the window and the landscape that they were zooming past. "I guess. I know a few things."

"Jack of all trades, master of none?"

"I wouldn't go that far."

"Which part is it you're objecting to?"

"Both? I don't see a need for labels."

"The world is predicated on them."

"Maybe that's why things are all fucked up, ever think about that?" She turned back to Sitwell, who was looking at her with a mildly bland expression. She had no idea what the mask was hiding, but she knew that it was hiding something. "The upper echelons are so focused on what makes us all different, they're not paying attention to the similarities. Differences divide. Similarities unite."

"Thats an idealistic stance for someone who's majoring in political science."

She shrugged. "Maybe. But that doesn't make it any less true."

"I can see why Coulson liked you. He thought the same way."

Darcy didn't respond after that, turning her attention back to the window. She knew. It wasn't until after the service, where she barely managed to keep her eyes from rolling all the way out of her skull at the dramatics of certain cellist (seriously? _She_ had broken it off with _him_ months prior, so it was a little hard to buy someone who had treated him so callously cast as the grieving widow.) that Sitwell tentatively revisited the topic. He waited until dinner, when she had a couple of glasses of wine under her belt.

"Miss Lewis, I realize that this is probably a bad time-"

"Oh shit."

"What?" Sitwell was on high alert the moment she interrupted him. "Do you see something?"

"Yeah. A secret agent about to proposition me." That got her a sharp, shrewd look. She could see why Phil had been friends with this man just as easily as he could see the appeal she'd held for Phil. Darcy didn't think there was much that escaped Sitwell. "I'm buzzed and grieving, Sitwell, not stupid."

Sitwell chuckled and sipped at his glass of water. "I'll remember that." He leaned forward, his elbows resting on the table. "Miss Lewis, can I be frank with you?"

"Only if I can be Dean." Her joke fell flat, earning her a blank look. "The Rat Pack? Frank Sinatra? Dean Martin?"

"Sorry, I'm not fluent in Ancient History." 

Darcy laughed at that, snorting softly into her glass It was the first time in days she'd felt anything other than either soul-crushing grief or comfortable numbness. "Okay, you get points for that sass. Go ahead and be frank with me."

"SHIELD took a big hit in the days before New York. We lost a lot of good agents."

"Shit, are you trying to recruit me?"

"Not quite." He took another sip of his water, letting her stew. "I'm authorized to offer you a position as a consultant. Specifically to keep an eye on Dr. Foster and her work."

"You want me to spy on my friend for you? Aren't you, like... already doing that?"

"Like I said, we're a little short-staffed at the moment. We don't have the time or manpower to sift through Dr. Foster's work. What we would like is for _you_ to do that, as you're already familiar with it, and then send weekly updates. You'll be compensated, of course, with a full package of benefits." Darcy gaped at him, marvelled at his absolute gall to hit her up with this after a funeral. "And, if something of interest should come up, or if something unexpected should happen, you would have SHIELD behind you. We don't want another Puente Antiguo to happen and I'm willing to bet you don't want that either."

"You're not going to take no for an answer for this, are you?"

Sitwell smiled at her then, a genuine actual one, with teeth and everything. "Miss Lewis, if I thought you'd say no, I wouldn't have offered it at all."

The flight back to Philadelphia had been mostly her looking over the contract Sitwell handed to her. It _seemed_ legit. Hell, it seemed down right _perfect_. Money was good, it would put less of a strain on her father, and being honest, Jane needed someone there with her who would bully her into being a human once in a while, not just a science machine, so in the end, she'd signed. Yes, there were painful memories there, but there were good ones too. She'd just have to hold on to those. Eventually. At that moment, the painful ones were far too fresh.

So back she'd gone, to the desert and the science that she didn't quite understand completely but was starting to get a grip on. Jane signed off on her missing credits and she'd graduated from Culver, deciding to forgo walking in the ceremony and having them just mail her degree. 

It was as one of their monthly face-to-face debriefings (this time over breakfast, because a girl needed breakfast meats) when Darcy was complaining about exactly how screwed she was going to be when it came time to start paying off all those student loans she'd taken out that Sitwell asked what she thought was a rather astute question.

"If you don't have to begin repayment while you're a student, why don't you just re-enroll?"

"That is a good idea in theory, but being in the middle of nowhere in New Mexico makes it hard to go to school in Washington D.C. Which is where the program I would literally sell my soul to get into is located."

"IWP?" 

Darcy nodded, spearing a sausage with her fork. 

"We send people through there all the time. If you signed on, we could get you in."

He'd said it so nonchalantly, as if signing her life away to a seriously shady government agency was no big deal. Like getting her into a program that only accept one hundred and fifty out of thousands of applicants per year was a piece of cake. And then he sat across the table from her, chewing on a piece of sourdough toast like he hadn't just dropped a bomb on her.

"You know what, Sitwell? I think you might be the Anti-Christ."

He shrugged it off, like it didn't bother him that she thought there was a better than middling chance that he was the Devil Incarnate for dangling her dreams before her like a carrot on a stick. "I've been called worse." 

It was tempting. It was the most tempting thing that Darcy had ever encountered in her life. Guaranteed admission to the program she'd been salivating over for years (and on someone else's dime, which was a dream come true) and a _real_ chance to do some good not just in the world but for the world, completely backed by the government. The only thing that held her back from jumping at the opportunity were the layers upon layers of secrecy that SHIELD was wrapped in. Darcy didn't do clandestine, period, because she wasn't any good at it. She'd never been into acting and liars did nothing but piss her off, making her desire to study political science on a global scale several different kinds of ironic. But giving serious thought to what Sitwell had said about joining SHIELD allowed her to consider his suggestion in general. She complained about it the same way everyone else did, but Darcy really _did_ enjoy school. She liked learning new things, which was part of why she'd gone out on a limb and applied for Jane's internship in the first place. She learned a lot from Jane every day, by asking questions and listening to the astrophysicist's sometimes mind-numbingly detailed but incredibly patient answers. So maybe Sitwell was onto something with the whole back to school idea.

And then there had been the other thing. That other factor. The Phil factor. She was living her life, because she wasn't about to end it over a tragically failed romance, but there wasn't a day that went by where she didn't think of him at least a couple of times. Every so often, she'd catch a whiff of his cologne on someone else and it would pull at her heart. She'd see a set of broad shoulders in a dark grey suit, or a tie that would bring out the blue in his eyes, and before she knew it, Darcy would be sucked back into the memories of him and the depressingly short time they'd had together. But Phil had believed in making the world a better, safer place and she couldn't think of any better tribute than to pick up that torch and run with it. She would never, could never, be the type of hero he was, but she could do something.

Submitting her application to the University of New Mexico- Albuquerque was incredibly nerve-wracking. It wasn't that she'd had doubts about whether or not she'd be accepted- That wasn't an issue after she'd had a talk with Sitwell, who had assured her that he'd have someone from HQ make a call on her behalf. It was the risk she took in applying for the Physics and Astrophysics program. Science had never been her strongest subject and math was even worse, but she had Jane's full support with promises to help when she needed it. Darcy knew that it was going to be tough, but having a more solid understanding of what Jane was doing was going to make her a better assistant in the short term and, when Jane was finally able to stabilize her Bridge and Darcy was free to get back into the geopolitical arena, she'd have a solid advantage over many of the future lawmakers that surrounded her.

Darcy's schedule over the next couple of years was hellish. Starting the Fall semester of 2011 through the Spring semester of 2013, her Sundays would be spent driving the four hundred miles that separated Puente Antiguo and Albuquerque. She attended classes until Wednesday morning, staying in on-campus housing, and then made the drive back on Wednesday afternoon unless something came up. Her professors, of course, knew her situation and were incredibly accommodating (which was probably a SHIELD thing too, though she chose to view it as a Jane and Erik thing), allowing her a fair bit of leeway when it came to classes that she was simply unable to attend because of her work. There was one winter session class that, after a telephone call with Jane, she'd been allowed to not attend entirely, Jane teaching her the material while they worked. It was difficult and frustrating, but she'd passed the class with a solid A.

She had just started her third year at UNM when Erik called Jane from London, rambling about readings and gravitational anomalies and pocket dimensions and who knew what else. Jane had immediately started texting Darcy and when she didn't answer, she called. Darcy had excused herself, apologizing to the professor as she practically ran into the hallway.

"What the hell? Jane, you have my schedule right in front of you. I am _in class_."

"Darcy, I wouldn't have called if this wasn't important."

"Unless the world is ending or you've managed to decapitate yourself and your disembodied head is making this call, it could have waited another half an hour."

"...Okay, you have a point. But since I have you now, I'll just tell you that I need you back here immediately."

"Seriously?"

"Absolutely."

"Jane, what is so important that I have to be there and it can't wait two more days?"

"Erik is in London."

"And?"

"He's getting readings that are extremely similar to the ones _we_ got from the Einstein-Rosen Bridge."

That had been pretty damn important. Darcy leaned against the wall, eyes staring at nothing. "...Shit."

"Exactly."

Darcy had sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose, already guessing that the situation was going to give her a headache. "Okay. So... start packing up the lab. Don't touch the computers or the hard drives, I'll take care of those when I get there. I'm going to have to talk to my professors and _you_ are probably going to have to go over the material with me like last time, so I might not make it tonight. In fact, I probably won't, but I'll head back tomorrow morning."

"That's... Okay, yeah, that's fine. Which classes are you taking this semester?"

"Three different fun and exciting varieties of physics with an astronomy chaser."

"That's no problem, just get the syllabi and we should be okay. Once we get to London, I'll see about getting us some time in a planetarium, maybe at the Peter Harrison."

"If my professors even go for it."

"They will."

"I'm glad you're confident, because I'm not."

"You're at the forefront of a very exciting branch of research, Darce. They'll go for it."

And then Shit had gone Down. Jane and Thor, and the Dark Elves and kissing her intern (good God, what a monumentally stupid idea that had been) and Erik in his underpants (which _nobody_ needed to see, frankly). Once everything was said and done, then SHIELD had shown up, trying to swoop in and be the heroes like they always did. But as annoyed as Darcy was at the way SHIELD had completely ignored every call she'd made, she was glad they were there. The clean up and media shit that had to happen was way beyond her pay grade, but if they were there, maybe Sitwell was on site and she could give him a piece of her mind in person. If he wanted here on hand for shit like this, then answering her calls was pretty damned important in case shit like this happened. But as she wound through the crowd of similarly black-suited agents looking for a particular bald head, she caught sight of someone different and it made her blood run cold.

It was a total crock of shit how they said that when a person had a near death experience, their lives flashed before their eyes. That didn't happen for Darcy and she _had_ to be either dead or dying, because the man standing in front of her was a ghost.

It was Phil. Her Phil. With the pleasant half smile not quite hiding the way annoyance wrinkled his brow, directing some other presumably junior agents as they gathered bits and pieces of the alien ship and weaponry that hadn't been caught up with Erik's Gravitron Sticks of Doom (her name for them, she didn't really care what boring ass name Erik had given them). And he was just... standing there. Like it was nothing. Like he was just doing his job. And Darcy felt like she was going to throw up.

"Coulson?" She'd called out his name before giving it any kind of thought and he turned toward her, pulling his sunglasses away from his face. _Oh, Lord, it's really him._ He turned to the severe looking Asian woman beside him and said something, causing her to nod once before she turned away to focus on whatever it was they were doing. 

"Miss Lewis." His voice was clipped, professional, and it matched the measured paces of his steps and the clean lines of his pressed suit. It sounded to her more like the agent who had stolen her iPod along with Jane's equipment than the man she'd known. God, it hurt. "It's been a long time."

"Are you fucking serious with this bullshit?" It was like she had even less control over her mouth than she normally did, because the words were out before she'd even consciously decided to say them. "What the _hell_ , Phil!"

He stopped short of joining her on the Greenwich lawn, staring at her from across that last six feet. "I'm sorry?"

"Sorry my ass!" Darcy was angry. No, she was more than angry. She was livid. She was incensed. She was enraged and outraged and any other kind of -raged there was. And she was hurt. If he'd been alive, why hadn't he given her a sign? _Any_ sign would have done. And if he'd been tired of their- well, not relationship _now_ , obviously- but if he'd been tired of it, he could have told her and they could have parted friends. He hadn't had to play- "Dead!" She closed the gap between them, right hand balling into a fist. She hadn't decided if she was going to punch him or not. "You are supposed to be dead, you asshole! I went to your fucking funeral!"

"I heard it was a lovely affair." Of _course_ he would counter with sarcasm. "I'm surprised you decided to attend."

"Very funny, Philip."

"I'm not trying to be funny."

That was when Darcy hit the pause button on her anger and let herself really look at Coulson. He was a little thinner than when she'd last seen him, but it had been a couple of years since then so that was to be expected. That wasn't the biggest change she saw, however, and once she noticed it, it was impossible not to. Everything about him was _close_ to the man she'd known, but it was off. Just by a hair, just by a fraction. He wasn't as quick to smile, even if it was the Agent smile that hid how he actually felt. He'd worn that smile like it was part of his armor before everything had happened and now-

He looked worried. Just for a heartbeat and then it was gone. That wasn't a good sign. Not a good sign at all.

"Why _wouldn't_ I have gone?"

He slipped his sunglasses back onto his face, masking that flash of confusion she'd caught. "Well, considering the fact that the last time we spoke you threatened to shove a 'toaster looking thing' that I assume would be a phasemeter someplace unpleasant if anything happened to your iPod while it was in my care, I would have assumed that attending my memorial service wouldn't have warranted a trip across the country."

Darcy felt like someone had punched her in the gut. Yes, she'd threatened that, but not _him_. She'd threatened to do that to one of the Junior agents, who had obviously not wanted to be there and had been flinging very delicate equipment around like a toddler having a tantrum. And that had been way back at the beginning, when SHIELD was still cleaning up Puente Antiguo, after Thor had left the first time. If that was the last time he remembered talking to her, what else had he forgotten?

Apparently she looked bad or something, because Phil reached out and took her arm. Darcy could feel him staring at her, but she wasn't about to look at him and show him how shocked she was. Not then. "Are you feeling alright, Miss Lewis?"

No. No, she wasn't, actually. She wasn't sure she would feel alright about anything ever again. Thanks for asking. "Uh... It's been a long few days. Saving the world and everything. Again. You're welcome, by the way." Darcy pulled her arm out of his grip and turned away. She was going to puke. Or cry. Maybe both. Either way, she couldn't be around him because it was only making that feeling worse, like she could scream on top of it all. And if she started screaming, that was going to be it. She'd never stop. "I'm going to... Yeah, I'm out of here. If you see Erik's stick things, let- You know what? Fuck it. I don't care."

God, she needed a drink.


	11. Chapter 11

He didnt want to think about the little things. He wanted desperately to believe that what he remembered was all there was to it. The cabana on the beach, the Mai Tais, the masseuse that thought everything he said (whether she understood him or not) was amazing. But he couldn't stop himself from thinking about them, because the little things were starting to add up.

First it had been Maria. She was a great agent, smart as a whip and bold, so bold. He admired that about her. A person had to be bold to keep up with Nick and, if need be, go against him. But she was just a little too accommodating, a hair too ready to let him have his way. Yeah, he'd been stabbed through the heart, but he was recovered... wasn't he? Her treatment of him shouldn't be any different than it had been before- more than coworkers, but not quite friends. A team.

Then it was May. He and Melinda had known each other a long time, through good times and bad. There were very few people on the planet that he trusted more than her. Hell, if he was honest, he could count those people on one hand and still have fingers left over, but she watched him like like a hawk when she thought he wasn't paying attention. He'd ignored it at first, owing it to his injury, but he was fine and he'd been fine for months. Even if he didn't always feel it, every test he ordered came back perfectly normal. What was Melinda looking for? Was she waiting for something? 

Phil swirled the bourbon he'd poured around the glass in his hand, watching the way the low light played on the amber colored liquid. Maria and Melinda, if it had just been them, he could have ignored it. Fury certainly didn't treat him any differently. Neither did Blake, Sitwell, Adsit... none of the other agents he worked closely with on a regular basis. It wasn't just them, though. It was him too. Him and the girl.

She confused him, truthfully, to the point where he had to dehumanize by not using her name ( _Darcy_ ) because otherwise the thought of her awakened this peculiar ache. He didn't understand it and there was very little that Phil Coulson couldn't grasp the basics of. It was part of what made him good at what he did. However this... preoccupation (he wasn't in middle school and refused to call it a crush) with a woman young enough to be his daughter, with whom he'd spoken maybe three times was something he just didn't get. Worse than that, it was like he _couldn’t_ get it and that was confounding. He didn't understand why she had this effect on him and he didn't like not understanding it. Why couldn't he stop thinking about her? Why had his blood run cold when he'd seen her in London, picking her way through the rubble? He'd read the reports before he'd had May turn the Bus in that direction and she'd been mentioned by name several times. It wasn't as if her presence had been a surprise. But seeing her, hearing her call his name, cleaning up what had been left of the bodies when Dr. Foster's other intern had flattened them with a car to keep the aliens from harming her (and there was that tightening again, that shiver, _what was that?_ ) was far, far different from the preliminary reports. 

Phil finished the last of his drink and then stood, scrubbing his face with his hands. He was just going to have to put the girl (not a girl, a woman, _Darcy_ ) out of his mind. He had too much to do to let himself be sidetracked by a (delightfully?) mouthy brunette, no matter how the look on her face before she'd turned away from him haunted his dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this wasn't a full-fledged chapter. I debated posting this at all, afraid that it would be too jarring a contrast between it and the fabulous unreliability of our usual narrator, but it wouldn't leave me alone and doesn't feel like enough to stand on its own. Hopefully you enjoy this little bit of insight into Coulson's state of mind while Darcy gets ready to throw down. :)


	12. Chapter 12

"I swear to God, if anyone talks higher than a whisper before my Tylenol kicks in, I will tase you." 

Darcy's threat was in no way idle as she shuffled from Jane's Mom's guest bedroom (normally _not_ occupied by her, but she'd figure out why she woke up in there later) to the small dining table. Thor, ever the gentleman, vacated a seat for her and did his best to keep his booming _ThunderVoice_ (which wasn't as funny when she was hung over as it was when she was stone cold sober) down to manageable levels. She appreciated the effort, even if he wasn't entirely successful. She was far less accommodating to Ian, who (ugh) was there and hovering around her like a gnat. "And you. I swear to Christ, if you don't get away from me right now, I'm going to punch you in the dick. Right in the dick. Full fist." Ian, presumably not wanting to be punched in the dick that morning, slunk away.

Somewhere behind her, she wasn't sure where but it was in the general vicinity of the kitchen, she could hear Jane and Thor whispering. "Is Darcy always this violent when she is recovering from a night of drink?"

"Oh, you have no idea."

That was when another wave of nausea hit her and she groaned, pushing the chair away from the table far enough to rest her forehead against the cool surface of it. Jane was right there, with a bucket that may have actually been a stock pot from the cabinet and a bottle of water. 

"You'll feel better if you vomit."

"I've vomited twice already."

"Maybe you need to vomit one more time?"

"I don't want to vomit one more time. I want to curl into a ball and die."

"Well, you're not allowed to do that."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm pretty sure your Dad and stepmother would give me that disapproving look if I let you die on my watch and I want to avoid that at all costs. So, you're not allowed."

Darcy snorted softly, amused but in too much pain and misery to really laugh. She took the bottle of water and sipped at it. "Could have died the other day."

"Yeah, but we were saving the world."

"So maybe you wouldn't have gotten the look then?"

"I would hope not." Jane placed a hand on her arm, rubbing gently. "You want some toast?"

"Yes, please."

"No butter?"

"No butter."

Thor took a seat beside her as Jane went to make the aforementioned toast, his hand heavy, warm, and oddly comforting as it rested on the back of her neck. "I have seen many warriors lose themselves to drink after a battle, but it is usually a celebration, to be shared with their shield brethren."

"You totally have ragers after a battle on Asgard, don't you?"

"Ragers?"

"Parties."

"Ah. Yes. We... rage. In celebration of victory and to honor the dead."

Honoring the dead. Darcy snorted again, but that time it wasn't amusement. Not even close. She picked her head up from the table, sipping at her water while she squinted at the golden god sitting beside her. She liked Thor. A lot, actually. He was honest. He was good in every sense of the word. If he made a promise, he tried his best to follow through... but he had no idea that people on this planet weren't always as forthright as he was. She was sure he knew it, on some level, but Midgardians were still shiny to him, she imagined. Mostly. So the lengths to which they would and could go to deceive each other were mostly a mystery and she really, honestly, dreaded the day when he would get an education on that.

"And what if you rage to honor the dead... and they don't end up being actually dead? What do you do then?"

Thor sat back, away from her just a bit. The impossibly electric blue of his eyes snapped, like he was lit from within by the lightning that heeded his call and, yeah, she'd totally admit to being dazzled for a few moments, even through the haze of hangover. But then his hand, heavy and warm and oddly comforting, slipped to her shoulder, giving it a squeeze. "If that were to happen, I would want answers. And I would not stop until I got them."

Yeah, she kind of figured that would be his answer. Jane returned with the toast, taking a seat on Darcy's other side. "You were going to see if you could find Erik's gravitational anomaly detectors... what happened?"

"I didn't find them. I found something else." Darcy really _really_ did not want to talk about this yet. She wasn't ready. She didn't know if she ever would be, so she stalled, biting into the toast and leaving Jane to stare at her. 

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"You know what, Darcy. What did you find?"

Darcy's mouth went dry, which really sucked for the whole eating toast thing. She caught Jane’s eye and then looked pointedly at Thor. If _Sitwell_ hadn’t spilled the beans about Coulson not actually being dead to them, and he was their former contact, then it probably hadn’t been shared with the alien space prince sitting at the kitchen table. “You know that guy I was kind of seeing? He was here.”

She watched as understanding replaced the confusion and concern on Jane’s face, only to be quickly supplanted by shock. “The… uh, the older man? The one you haven’t heard from since-”

“Since a year and a half ago? Yeah.”

Thor’s face fell as he listened to them, his brows pulling together. “A suitor scorned you and now returns to win back your favor?”

“Not quite.” Darcy sipped at her water again, stalling. She was such an incredible chicken shit. Knowing that you didn't want to give voice to something because mentioning it out loud made it entirely too real didn't make it okay. A girl couldn't run from her problems- strike that, a _woman_ couldn't run from her problems, not even the tough ones. Maybe especially not the tough ones. She was better off facing them head on and dealing with the consequences. "He would have to remember me in order to do that."

If it had been any other situation, Darcy would have laughed at the way Jane’s jaw hit the floor. Normally she lived to shock petite physicists, but there wasn't a single thing about this fiasco that was funny. Everything about it was sad.

"What do you mean? How can he not remember you?"

"I mean he doesn't remember me. Our conversation wasn't long or anything but he made it pretty clear that he remembered meeting me, but that was about it."

“How can he not remember you? You guys were on the phone _constantly_ for what? A year?”

“Yeah, close to it.” Darcy sighed, hiding her face in her hands. “And I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I don’t know what happened, I don’t know _why_ he thinks we only met, like, the one time. All I know is he was supposed to have died and he’s very obviously alive but from some weird Bizarro World-”

“Bizarro World?” Darcy peeked out at Thor’s face when he broke in and the combined looks of confusion and displeasure were almost comical. It was never one expression at once, but a weird melding of the two, like waves that would cross his face. "Where is this Bizarro World? I would have words with them for causing you such distress." Darcy just looked at him. God, she loved that Labrador of a man. 

Jane saved the day by explaining the whole Bizarro World concept and, after, he looked a lot less ready to smite things... Even if, at that moment, Darcy wouldn't mind a few smitings done in her name. Most of whom were stupid SHIELD agents. Who had lied to her for the past two years. 

Okay, new subject, because she was getting pissed off again, and being angry and sad and hurt was what had lead to this rather spectacular hangover she was sporting. Unfortunately, Jane wasn't on the Subject Change train, because as soon as the confusion on Thor's face was replaced with concern, she turned back to Darcy. "So what are you going to do?"

"What do you mean?"

"I've known you for more than a few years now, Darce. You're going to do something and it's probably not going to be something I'm going to like."

"You're right. It's probably not."

Jane and Thor exchanged a glance and a shrug and... Christ, how did couples even do that whole telepathic communication thing? Not that she had a lot of time to ponder it before Thor turned his attention back to her, squeezing her shoulder lightly. "Whatever course of action you choose to take, Darcy, know that you have our full support. Those that have wronged you should be made to pay for their trespasses... And I suspect that you may already have a plan."

Darcy patted the hand on her shoulder. With her painkillers kicking in and something more than bile and alcohol in her stomach, she was starting to feel more human. That meant that her brain was also starting to function like it normally would. "You could not be more right, big guy. I do have a plan." This time her sip of water was purely for dramatic effect. It made her feel a little like a Bond villain. "I'm going to let them come to me."

* * *

It had seemed like a good idea at the time, letting SHIELD come to her rather than trying to storm their castle. After all, they were a _huge_ government entity with thousands of official and unofficial employees and she was a petite physics student who was possibly maybe failing this semester because she was off in London helping to keep aliens from invading the planet. Again. (Seriously, how had this become her life?) And _now_ her studies were falling further to the wayside while she unraveled the mystery of her formerly-dead, currently-alive ex- ... something. He was an ex-something, but she wasn't quite sure what title would be most appropriate. Lover? No, that was awkward, if technically correct. Suitor? Hell to the no. Boyfriend didn't work either. So Something it was. But no matter what words she used to describe what she and Phil (no, she corrected herself often. Not Phil anymore, _Coulson_ ) had had, letting them do the heavy lifting when it came to tracking her down so she could get the answers she needed had seemed to be the right play. 

Darcy had started with Sitwell. Calls and messages went unanswered, so she took control of his phone. Not that she intended to do anything malicious to it right then, of course, she just wanted to make sure he got that she wanted to speak to him. The easiest way to get that point across was making it so every time he unlocked it, it called her. It took him three days and two new phones to figure out that it was deliberate. 

"Miss Lewis, unless you've befriended a deity of technology that I'm unaware of, you have some explaining to do." He sounded annoyed. Good.

Darcy put on her most sugary sweet voice. "It's lovely to hear from you, Jasper! How's work? How's your day?"

"I don't have time for games, Darcy." There was a warning there, and she was just reckless enough to ignore it. If he tried anything, Thor would pummel him into the ground. She wasn't worried.

"You want to dispense with the games? Fine. Give me your boss's name and I'll be out of your hair."

"Funny."

"I thought so."

"Why do you need my boss's name?"

"I'm want to sell him a cruise. Is he more of a Caribbean or Alaska kind of guy?"

"He's not the cruise type. Now why do you need his name?"

This time she let a little bit of a warning seep into her voice was well, not quite enough to be a clear threat but enough to make it obvious that she was not fucking happy. "Because I want it. Whether you give it to me, Sitwell, or I dig it up myself doesn't matter much to me. Either way, I'll have it and your superiors will be breathing down your neck about controlling your assets."

"Maybe they will. I'm still not giving it to you without knowing the real reason you want it."

"I want to invite him to my niece's birthday party."

"Good night, Miss Lewis." 

"Hey Sitwell?"

"Yes?"

Darcy gave it a beat before she continued speaking. Dramatic pauses were so underused in real life. Sure, writers used them and filmmakers took advantage of them, but real life was so often about instant gratification that the dramatic pause just fell to the wayside. She used one now, though. Because she wanted him to remember this. "You're a fucking liar." That was when Sitwell hung up. It was just as well. The hard way would be more fun.

* * *

Of course, as it turned out, fun was a relative term. It wasn't like she did any lasting damage. That was some people's game but it wasn't hers. She wasn't even into the whole data-mining-and-releasing-government-secrets thing that some of (most of, really) the hacktivists she knew were into. She just needed one thing, one name and maybe a phone number, a place to start and that was it. Darcy wasn't looking to recruit help on this; it was a personal mission. She needed to do it, not have it done for her. 

But apparently someone else (or someones else) had been using those back doors she'd snuck through the last time she needed information she wasn't getting from more law-abiding sources. It didn't occur to her that those channels were being monitored until the black-suited Agents grabbed her as she was walking back to the apartment with a fresh cup of coffee and a scone in her hands one morning. (And, to make matters worse, her coffee totally spilled everywhere and she dropped half her scone and then the agents wouldn't even let her eat the other half. What a waste.)

For a long time, she didn't see anything but the black bag over her head. It was stuffy and musty and all she could think was that it was a damned good thing she wasn't claustrophobic and had no issues with the being in the dark thing, because if she did then there would have been problems. She tried to talk to the agents that had grabbed her, to tell them that she had very powerful friends and that those friends would be _so pissed_ when she didn't show up and didn't call, but even though she knew people were there thanks to the hands that held firm on her upper arms, all Darcy got was silence in return and, once, a gruff "Be quiet."

Any kind of response was a good one, right? They didn't seem to want to rough her up, yet, so maybe it was time to push back.

"Dude. Seriously. Would it kill you to wash the bag?"

Goon #1 answered with a slight shake of the arm his had his Kung Fu Grip on. "You were told to stay quiet."

"Yeah, I was never very good at following orders."

Goon #1 snorted at that as the vehicle they were in (SUV of some sort? It didn't feel like a cargo van or anything, so apparently this was a high class kidnapping.) came to a stop. "Miss Lewis, we are going to be exiting the vehicle in a moment. Now, you have two options. You can cooperate with us and walk, calmly, trusting my partner and I to guide you, or you can resist. I should warn you: if you resist, you will be knocked unconscious and thrown over my partner's shoulder."

That was where Darcy got frightened. She may be in a car with strangers, no idea where she was, with a bag over her head and her hands bound (duct tape? It felt like duct tape), but at least she was conscious. She could see (nothing but the inside of the bag) and she could hear and her legs were free. Conceivably, if the opportunity arose, she could try to escape. If she was knocked out, that option was remove and she was at their mercy. In this case, the lesser of the two evils she was presented with won.

"I'll behave. Sort of. I mean, I won't fight you."

"A wise choice."

God, that guy was a prick. "Will you take this bag off now?"

"No."

Strike that. He wasn't a prick. He was an asshole.

After that delightful little exchange with one of her captors, Darcy was "helped" out of the vehicle and "assisted" up some sort of ramp (metal? It sounded a little like metal) before being "escorted" up a short flight set of steps. She was "shown" into some sort of room (because there was definitely a door that opened and closed) and "placed" in a chair.

"Would you like me to secure her, sir?"

The voice that answered was male, obviously, and deep. Authoritative. "I don't think that'll be necessary." Someone who was used to calling shots, obviously. Maybe her little gamble worked and someone higher up in the organization had been sent to deal with her. "You can go ahead and remove the hood, Rumlow."

There was a rush of movement and air and light and finally, Darcy could breathe freely again. She looked behind her as soon as the bag was lifted, trying to catch a glimpse first of the man who'd grabbed her. Tall, medium skin, dark hair. Built like a tank. Normally she'd be into that, but he was kind of a jerk. That definitely erased any points being easy on the eyes granted him. "It's about damned time, Rumlow." He paused in his retreat, just for a fraction of a second, then continued, shutting the door behind him.

She expected to be in some sort of cell or interrogation room or something, but the space she'd been brought to looked like an office. And it wasn't even a fancy one, it was one that looked like it had been redecorated last in the 70s by someone who was _really_ into beige, mustard yellow, and wood paneling. 

The retro blandness was in sharp contrast to the man sitting behind the desk, watching her. Bald (or balding, it was hard to tell), dark skin. Eye patch (black) color coordinated to match the rest of his outfit (also black). And dangerous. He wasn't looming over her or being threatening in any way (yet) but she figured he was probably a little like a lion or a tiger: totally cool until they decided you were lunch.

"Miss Lewis, what in the hell do you think you are doing? This isn't a game." He was direct, this nameless man who was chastising her. She could respect that.

"Well, right now, I'm wondering who the hell you are and how long it took you to decide to live a life of piracy."

The look he gave her was definitely unimpressed. Maybe he'd already heard that one. "Nick Fury." 

"Oh, so you're a professional wrestler? How's that working for you?"

"I'm the Director of SHIELD and the man who authorizes your paychecks." She must have looked shocked or something, because the annoyed look on his face eased just a fraction, and was replaced by a small amount of anger. "Oh, _that_ shut you up? Do you have any idea how often your name has been across my desk in the last week and a half?"

"I'm going to guess that the answer is a lot."

"You're damned right, it's a lot. It should be zero."

"I'm going to have to say that it's only partially my fault. If Sitwell had cooperated, I wouldn't have had to-"

"Infiltrate a government network and nearly get your name put on a god damn terrorist watch list?"

Oh. Yeah, she supposed that wasn't too extreme a response to the attack she'd mounted against them, even if she was surprised by that being an option. "I was going to say take extreme actions, but that'll work too."

"You're lucky Sitwell likes you, because otherwise your ass would be in custody right now." Fury stood and rounded his desk, pulling pulling knife from his pocket and flicking it open with an audible _snnkt_. "Give me your hands."

Darcy pulled back, eyeing the knife. "I don't want to."

"I'm not going to cut you, now give me your damn hands."

She complied, but Darcy knew what he was doing. She'd taken taken a couple psychology courses over the years and she recognized, while he slipped the razor sharp knife point between tape and skin, that he was trying to build some trust. Little things like that went a long way in hostage situations (and up until that point, she hadn't thought of herself as being in one, but she totally was). Well, she would give him one thing as he freed the tape from her skin as gently as possible- his hands were gentle and soft and he was _trying_ to be kind. The least she could do was be direct about what she wanted. "Mr. Fury, what happened to Phil Coulson?"

Fury's hands never stilled, his attention never wavered. "Phil died."

"No, he didn't."

Fury watched her as he balled up the tape that had bound her wrists, squeezing it hard in his fist. "Yes, actually, he did."

"Then that was a very convincing imposter I spoke to in Greenwich."

"You weren't supposed to be anywhere near the clean up."

"Well, I was."

Fury sighed, rubbing his forehead as he leaned back against his desk. "Look, Miss Lewis... I know you and Phil were close. I know he was planning a trip to see you when New York happened. So please trust me when I say that I cannot tell you what happened to him, not how he died and not how he is alive today."

"Why doesn't he remember me? He acted like he barely knew me when I spoke to him."

Fury caught her gaze and held onto it. She couldn't have looked away if her life depended on it. "The things we did to get him back and keep him here weren't exactly pleasant. Most of the last two years of his life had to be be rewritten."

Darcy must have looked pale or something (heaven knew she kind of wanted to vom right then), because Fury kneeled down beside her chair, his hand resting on her shoulder. Maybe it was for comfort, maybe it was for balance, maybe it was just to continue this trust building game he was playing. "Miss Lewis, Phil remembering anything, and I do mean _anything_ about the steps we took could have dire consequences. He can never remember."

And that was it. That was everything. What they'd had, that spark of hope and love and life, had been the sacrifice to a blood-thirsty god required to a raise him from the dead. While part of Darcy wanted rail and scream and cry and strike out against the man beside her, another more logical part was holding her back. Wasn't it better, that part said, just to know that he was alive? That he was out there, saving the world, doing what he was was meant to be doing? Even if he didn't remember what they'd had, she did. And wasn't that enough?

No. No, it wasn't. This was just about the worst thing she could think of, but it wasn't as if she had much choice.

"You guys know where I am, like, ninety-nine percent of the time." Darcy couldn't bear to look at the man, so she didn't even try. "It's up to you to make sure he stays away from me."

"We'll do that."

"And I'll need need a ride back. I'm not hoofing it from here." 

"I'll have an agent take you back to your apartment immediately."

"Not Rumlow."

"No, it'll be someone else."

Darcy nodded and stood, shrugging his hand off her shoulder. She wanted to be out of this place and away from these people as quickly as possible so she could curl into a ball and cry in peace. That just wasn't in the cards though.

He waited until her hand was on the doorknob, ready to twist it, before he spoke up. "Thank you for understanding, Darcy."

Darcy spat her reply at him over her shoulder as she left, because she refused to let him see the tears that were starting to gather in her eyes. "Fuck you, Fury."


	13. Chapter 13

## April, 2014 

It was the little things that always added up. They were what showed Phil that his world was... not wrong, but not right either, and all the missions, all the assignments in the world couldn't fix it. It didn't seem to matter how hard he tried.

It had started in February. It started with a girl in a flower dress and a machine that fought back twice as hard as he resisted it. He hadn't _wanted_ to know what secrets were buried in his memory, or maybe he had. It was hard to remember now. It was hard to sleep with the images (lines and circles and ovals, but it's never enough, it's never quite right) flashing through his brain, just behind his eyes every time he closed them. It was distracting, but hardly the most pressing issue on his plate. That was Audrey. Or more to the point, the conundrum of her. Her and the girl ( _Darcy_. His mind never let her go unnamed, his heart never let the name go unanswered, setting into a painful ache deep inside his chest).

From what he could recall, he'd been happy with Audrey. He'd cared for her, deeply, and yes he felt a certain amount of responsibility toward her. He'd promised to keep her safe, always. He'd promised to stay by her side, as much as his life would allow him to. But she'd moved and he'd ( _moved on_ ) gotten busy and they'd discussed taking a trip, but it had never gotten past the planning stages. Then New York happened. Then he'd died. And rather than insist on his social resurrection as much as it had been achieved in a very literal sense, Phil Coulson had stayed dead. As long as he didn't think about it, it didn't bother him much. His life changed very little whether he was "dead" or "alive".

The problem, the real problem, was that Phil could no longer trust what he remembered to be true. He clearly remembered relaxing on a beach with novels by Elmore Leonard and John D. MacDonald, but the girl in the flower dress and her machine had ripped that pleasant little fantasy to shreds. And if that wasn't true...

If that wasn't true, what else was comprised entirely of lies? What had he lost? What had been erased, struck out, written over? If everything was as he remembered it to be, if he loved Audrey like he had thought he had, why didn't he miss her more? Why had it been so easy for him to walk away once she was safe? Not that it had been easy, per se, but if you truly loved a person, shouldn't it be harder to give them up? (And there it was again. The image of a dark curl coiled around his finger, the sound of a throaty laugh, a pair of flashing blue eyes that challenged him every chance they got. That wasn't Audrey. It was never Audrey who made his chest tighten and his breath come up short. It was her. The girl. _Darcy_. He'd tried ignoring it, but that ache never quite went away. Not since he'd seen her in London amidst the wreckage of an alien craft.)

He had it, the machine. Well, SHIELD did. They'd confiscated it when Raina was taken into custody, but he was loathe to use it again. The memory of his last round with it was still too fresh, and it wasn't as if things weren't slipping through the cracks of the facade that had been built around the truth in his mind. Most of the time, it was something small. A report he'd filed, a call he'd taken. But there were other things too. A grey dress that fit like a glove and made his heart race, a taste on his lips that was both tangy and sweet, the thought that he would never get tired of hearing all the million ways that particular set of full lips could utter his name. He was still piecing together how those things fit with the rest. He may have been coming up short, but he was trying.

Phil didn't need a clock to tell him it was late. All he needed was to listen. During the daylight hours, when everyone was awake and working, there was a comforting amount of noise that drifted from the cargo space, the lab, the living quarters. FitzSimmons having a usually good natured argument, Ward working with Skye on how to disarm an attacker or how to throw a punch without injuring herself and Skye sassing back with the sort of sarcasm that he'd always imagined a child of his, had one ever existed, would possess. But at night when everyone, or almost everyone, was tucked into their bunks, those thoughts and memories that he didn't understand and couldn't slot into place easily were far more persistent.

It was morning in New Mexico when he pulled up the feed (the one he had told himself he would stop watching every time it loaded, that this was the last time). A campus security camera caught her walking away from a coffee cart, both hands wrapped around around the thin paper cup like she was freezing and the only thing standing between her and oblivion was that overpriced, watered down, piss poor excuse of of a beverage (according to Yelp, he hadn't actually been there yet). She didn't look happy, not by a long shot, but the melancholy that had surrounded her like a fog was starting to lift, just the way winter was loosening its hold to make way for spring. It helped for some reason, seeing that lightness within her asserting itself again. It made his own darkness just a tiny bit more bearable.

He didn't follow her this time, chasing her across campus from one camera to another. Even though the picture was grainy and unfocused, it was enough. Enough to let his head stop chipping away at the conundrum of Darcy Lewis for a few hours. Enough to let him get a little bit of rest. Maybe next time it wouldn't be, but this time, just seeing her was enough to let him sleep with a smile on his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another Coulson chapter, because I wanted to address the Audrey thing but not by him talking it out with her when her next chapter comes up.


	14. Chapter 14

When it came right down to it, Darcy was of the opinion that mourning someone who was _actually_ dead was a hell of a lot easier than mourning someone who was alive, but lost. There are a lot of different kinds of lost. Darcy was one of them for the duration of her winter break. She was pretty much okay after the whole London thing and the meeting she'd had with Nick Fury. Not great, obviously. She'd been more than a little bit in shock (most about telling the director of a premiere intelligence agency to fuck off, because he probably had the very real connections to keep her completely out of the statecraft game when she finally dipped her toe into it), but as a whole she thought she was pretty alright. She, Jane and Erik spent the remainder or November in London, monitoring the fading gravitational anomalies and crunching the data they'd collected on them (she had no idea what for, though. It wasn't like humanity would be exactly as it was now in five thousand years when that alignment crap happened again). She'd finished her coursework with Jane and emailed it off to her professors, all her classes passed with top marks. When it was time to go home, Jane and Thor had headed off to New Mexico and with Christmas coming up, Darcy went back to West Chester. 

"Are you sure you don't want to come with us?" Jane had asked, looking worried for her friendtern (part-friend/part-intern, since Jane was still under the occasional impression that Darcy wasn't, like, seventy-five percent of the way toward being a full-fledged scientist all on her own).

Darcy had shook her head. "Nah, I'm good. Besides, Dad and Mo are looking forward to me actually being around for Christmas this year for a change." Plus, being on the opposite side of the country would keep her from being an unwilling witness to what was sure to be some massively athletic reunion sex. That was a definite perk, but all things considered, she didn't think she was ready to suffer through that particular torture. She was getting better- she'd shored up her heart and was taking it slow, letting things mend, but what was the harm in avoiding something that she knew would be difficult outright? Cut that shit off at the pass.

Christmas came and went and, as the new year loomed ahead, Darcy found herself floating. Oh, she smiled and laughed and made jokes and, to all outward appearances, was her normal self, but she was just going through the motions. She was killing time, waiting for her heart and her head to sync back up, because she was very much stuck in a state of "what". What the hell was she supposed to do with the knowledge that Phil was alive but that the organization he'd dedicated his life to had done some weird voodoo magic or something on him and made him forget a huge chunk of his life? What was she supposed to do with _herself_ , now that a big portion of her motivation to make the world a better place, to honor Phil's memory, was based on bullshit and lies? What was she doing torturing herself working for a degree in a field she wasn't passionate about? What was she doing? Just... what?

And the kicker was that there weren't any answers to be had, not really. Adulthood was less about blacks and whites and more about navigating all the infinite shades of grey that the world threw at a person. The older generations like to pretend there was a beaten path, made easier for those that came after them to follow by their hard work and dedication, but that was bullshit. Every single person alive on the planet was a trailblazer and maybe it was time for Darcy Christine Lewis to stop looking toward the past to decide where her future was heading. Maybe this (a little heart broken, a little lost, a little confused) wasn't what she'd always envisioned for herself, but it was where she was. There was only one person who could make things in her life right, and it sure as hell wasn't Phil Coulson or Nick Fucking Fury.

Winter break ended and, with a new clarity of purpose, Darcy went back to school. Sitwell texted her a couple of times as classes started back up, but she blew him off with a terse "Don't call me, I'll call you". She only had to scream at him twice before he got the hint. She focused on her classes, called Jane when she needed help and, with a little ingenuity and a little not-so-accidental most-likely-illegal reconfiguring of her home network, she was able to do much of her work with Jane remotely. Lord knew it was easier for her to not spend two days a week in the car, driving between Albuquerque and Puente Antiguo. Those semi-weekly trips became biweekly, when she could fit it in. Her reports to SHIELD slowed to a crawl, but Sitwell (and Fury) kept authorizing her paychecks. If they wanted to pay for her silence rather than her work, she was fine with that. 

The semester was coming to a close when SHIELD was suddenly plastered all over the news. It was finals week, so Darcy only caught snippets of it. There was some sort of attack. Helicarriers went down in the Potomac. Something about a senator being killed, Captain America being injured. She forced herself to stop listening after that, to focus on the task at hand, to _not_ worry about whether or not Coulson (because it was Coulson, Agent Coulson now, not Phil) had survived whatever had gone down. Chances were high that she would never know the answer to that question, so tormenting herself with it seemed pointless. She did, however, send a couple of texts in Sitwell's direction, asking if he was okay. The lack of reply seemed like answer enough.

Her checks stopped rolling in soon after that, so Darcy economized. She cut back where she could and was considering looking for a roommate when, very suddenly, the regular deposits she'd been getting from SHIELD resumed. Hell, they didn't just resume, they were far above what she had been receiving and according to her bank, the funds were direct deposited, so it wasn't a teller somewhere mistakenly crediting her with some small business's entire monthly payroll or something. A little digging gave her a phone number and that phone number gave her a _very_ interesting conversation.

"How did you get this number?"

_Well, howdy-do to you too, neighbor._ "I found it. I'm looking for some information on some deposits to my account?"

The guy on the other end of the line (possibly British, very posh sounding) cleared his throat. "I may be able to assist you, Miss-?"

"Darcy Lewis."

"Ah yes, Miss Lewis. Assistant to Dr. Jane Foster, correct? Author of the Foster Theory?"

"Sometimes." 

"Very good."

"So what's up with the cash? Do you guys, like, want it back?"

"No, Miss Lewis, the money is yours. I was told by a former colleague of mine, a Jasper Sitwell, that you were instrumental in keeping him apprised of Dr. Foster's progress. We would simply like you to continue that work and continue to keep us abreast of any new developments."

This was sounding fishier the longer Darcy listened. "Are... Are you guys SHIELD?" 

The self-important chuckle that answered her could only be described as smarmy. "Goodness, no. We are not SHIELD, Miss Lewis, though we are a contemporary."

"Yeah... I'm going to have to pass on that. I'm not into selling secrets to mysterious, potentially international people who are almost certainly Bond villains."

"Miss Lewis, you have no choice in this matter. You will make weekly reports regarding Dr. Foster's work, for which you will be rather handsomely compensated."

Darcy's mouth went dry. The man's voice was perfectly pleasant and incredibly cultured, but the threat was very real and very present, hidden by only the faintest veneer of civility. "...And if I refuse?"

"If you refuse to cooperate, your father and your stepmother will be dragged from their bed in the middle of the night. They will be beaten, at length, and it will be explained that you and you alone could have prevented this. Then I will _personally_ , and with great pleasure, watch the expression on your father's face as I put a bullet through his wife's brain." 

Darcy swallowed down the panic that threatened as the man continued speaking.   
"I believe I shall take your silence as acquiescence. That is a wise move on your part, Miss Lewis. Complying willingly makes this whole situation so much more civil."

Whoever this person was, whomever they worked for... Jane's research wasn't worth anyone's lives, especially not her dad's. Maybe she was an asshole for getting caught up in this, but if doing what they said, if becoming some sort of traitor, kept her dad and Mo alive? Fine. Better her than them.

"So." Darcy stopped and cleared her throat, trying to will some moisture back into mouth. "Are you my contact? What do I call you?"

"You may call me Mr. Bakshi."

* * *

Taking Bakshi's money made Darcy feel dirty, but she reasoned her way through it. If she took it but didn't spend it, she could presumably give it back or to the FBI or the authorities or something. They could trace back the payments and see how they were transmitted and where from. If she saved up enough, she could maybe get her dad and Mo somewhere safe before she blew that whistle. Even if she ended up spending the rest of her life in Gitmo or somewhere even more unpleasant, they would be taken care of at least. And Jane...

Jane was a champ. Jane was an angel. She had seen there was something wrong with Darcy the moment she'd been back in the lab. The whole horrible story came out almost immediately and Jane, that angel of practicality, came up with the perfect solution.

"Well... you can't feed them information you aren't getting, right? And if you're not getting anything substantial, that's hardly your fault, especially in London."

"I'm sorry... what about London?"

"Did I forget to tell you?"

"Uh, obviously, because I am incredibly confused right now. What’s going on in London?”

“Erik is working on a project in London. You’re going to help him.”

“I am?”

“Unless you have a better idea? Yes. You’re going to help him… and Ian.” Darcy bit back a groan and didn’t even get through a quarter of her eye roll before Jane continued. “I know, I know… But Ian is incredibly qualified for this project. Erik asked for you, but you were still in school, so he got Ian instead. Now that you’re available again and his work is picking up, he can use the help.”

Darcy didn’t like it, but she didn’t really need to like it. The opportunity was perfect- It got her away from Jane’s research, away from that asshole Bakshi, and it helped Erik out. “But… what about you? What’re you going to do?”

Jane shrugged the question off, like it was no big thing, but the little crease in her forehead gave her concern away. “Mom found a lump. They’re doing a biopsy next week at the University of Chicago. I’m going up there to help her out while she’s recovering and waiting for the test results.”

“Well, shit. That sucks. I hope it turns out to be nothing.”

“Me too.”

* * *

All in all, the transition from being Jane's remote helper monkey to being Erik's remote helper monkey was relatively painless. Even though she was mostly qualified, the heavy number crunching was firmly in Ian's territory (he was better at it anyway), so she mainly had to run the server farm that was powering Erik's portable thinktank while he was out in the moors or the highlands or wherever it was he and Ian spent most of their time. Darcy was never quite sure where it was, but it wasn't in London, where she was based, and that was fine by her. Erik had even arranged for actual office space so she wasn't crammed in Jane's mom's place with more computers than she could shake a stick at, which made keeping a clear distinction between work and non-work life even easier.

She settled into a pleasant routine. Darcy got up, went for a run, had breakfast. She showered and dressed and then walked the mile or so to the office. She settled in, checked on all her machines, made sure everything was working the way it was supposed to, then she waited for Erik and Ian to start sending requests. When she was hungry, she grabbed lunch. Sometimes, if the boys were working late, she grabbed dinner but eventually she'd tell them she was calling it a night and she'd head back to the apartment, put on her pajamas, watch some trashy TV and then sleep. As far as summer jobs went, it was perfect. She tore through Candy Crush levels like it was going out of style.

She was doing a little maintenance on one of the servers, vacuuming out the never ending supply of dust, one day when a polite cough sounded behind her. Darcy hadn't heard the door, but it wasn't a surprise with the vacuum going. People came in all the time anyway, looking for offices that weren't hers.

"Sorry, man. If you're looking for the lawyer, he's next door. The Benefits office is down the hall."

"Actually, Miss Lewis, I'm looking for you."

Darcy's heart stopped and her cheeks flooded with color... not that her guest could see that, with her face still buried in what had to be a dust bunny farm. For a moment, her brain screamed out _Bakshi!_ but no. The voice was the wrong timbre, a different accent coloring the words. The color drained from her cheeks just as quickly as it had rushed there when it sunk in just who as addressing her.

"It's good to see you again." She sat up and spun around on her stool to face the man who'd addressed her. "How can I help you today, Agent Coulson?"

He looked tired, worried, like he'd aged at least five years since she'd seen him in November, but there was still a spring in his step as he crossed the floor and closed some of the distance between them. "It's not Agent anymore."

"I saw something on the news about what went down with SHIELD, but it was finals week. I was a little preoccupied."

"I don't blame you for not paying attention. Your studies are very important."

This was more painful than Darcy had thought a situation like this could be, not because of the stilted conversation that had once flowed so easily, but because it was clear that something had changed with him. Something big. It worried her. 

"Yes, my professors tend to think so too." Darcy grabbed her water bottle and took a drink, more as an excuse to do something other than banter awkwardly than from any actual feeling of thirst. "So, you said you were looking for me?"

Darcy tried to read the expression on his face, but there were so many. There was the Agent Coulson mask, of course, covering everything below the surface with a thin veneer of pleasant blandness, but she could see the frustration and worry in the wrinkles around his eyes and across his forehead, the determination in the set of his jaw, but there was something hard to finger in his eyes. Maybe he had a headache, maybe he was hungry or thirsty- it was something like that. Pain. 

"I was. You are a surprisingly difficult young woman to find."

She shrugged. "I've been here since school let out and I'll be here for another month at least, until school is back in, so I shouldn't be that hard to track down. Now, what do you want?"

Coulson (and how tempting was it to think of him as Phil again in that moment) sighed, rounding the counter that had separated them to lean against it, his arms crossed high on his chest. "What do I want? I want answers."

"And what makes you think I can give them to you?"

He stood there, looking at her for a moment before he answered. "Because I've seen the logs of your forays into SHIELD's network and I've guessed what you were looking for. Because, based on what you said the last time we met, your memories of the time after the New Mexico incident and mine are vastly different."

Phil's (no, it was Coulson. _Coulson's_ ) expression cracked, his eyes almost pleading with her to help him. That was when Darcy looked away. "Darcy... something was taken from me. Something precious. And I've pieced together what I could from the official records, but I know I'm not getting the entire story." She was keeping her shit together, barely, when he crouched beside her, a hand laid lightly on her shoulder. "I am positive that you have some of the pieces of that puzzle. You're the only person on the planet who can help me put some of these things together."

Darcy didn't realize that she was crying until Phil took his handkerchief from his pocket and started to mop up her face. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you."

She took the cloth and carefully blotted her face, salvaging what she could of her eye makeup before handing it back to him. "I just don't know if it's a good idea, Phil. Maybe some things are better left buried."

His hand tightened on her shoulder for just a moment before he released. "No. Not this. Never this. This is not one of those things." Phil's shoulders drooped, his head dropping to his chest to hide his face. "Darcy... I dream about you. Almost every night."

"Stop," she whispered. Or maybe she just imagined it, because he kept going, not knowing that every word was ripping her heart apart.

"I thought it was Audrey at first, but it wasn't. It's you." 

"Shut up." Darcy knew she spoke aloud that time, because she damn near choked on the words. Phil just wasn't hearing her. He'd found the opportunity to get this off his chest and he was taking it.

"The dreams- and I'm not even really sure that's what they are- are just fragments. I'll get a glimpse and it's like I can almost remember, but I fall short. I can't make the connection, not without help, but I want to. I want to remember. I want want the pieces of me that were taken away back."

Darcy was beyond the ability to form words at that point and try as she might, the tears just wouldn't stop once they get rolling. Phil looked pained when he finally lifted his head and got an eyeful of her. "I didn't want to make you cry. That was the last thing I wanted." He didn't bother with the handkerchief when he cleared the tears on her cheeks that time. "I just... I look at my phone a million times a day, and every single time it's not you, sweetheart, I'm disappointed."

It was the "sweetheart" that broke the dam. Darcy didn't fight the sobbing that started, she ignored it entirely. She was far too focused on pulling Phil as close to her as possible, on holding him tight. Even later she wouldn't be able to recall who had kissed who first, but it happened, desperate, frenzied, hungry kisses that were more lips and teeth than tongue. It wasn't just Darcy who was pouring every jagged little piece of her heart into it either. Phil Coulson, king of bland looks and undercover sass, was gripping her just as tightly, kissing her just as hungrily. His hands were everywhere, her back, her shoulders, her face, like he was drinking her up. 

When they finally broke apart, gasping for air, Darcy gave herself a single solid moment to revel in the fact that Phil was _there_ , with her, in her arms (or, actually, technically, she was in his and on his lap, since somewhere in the kissing frenzy her stool had rolled away) and he remembered her. Kind of. The details were still sketchy, but if that kiss was anything to go by, everything was coming back to him. And after that moment, she pulled back completely, studying all the little changes in his face. "Phil... I can't tell you how much I missed you..."

Phil smiled, his eyes still a little glowy from the afterglow of the kiss. He opened his mouth to speak-

And was completely caught off guard when she punched him in the shoulder.

"Ow! What was that for?"

"That? That was for dying on me, Coulson. The forgetting me thing was like, ninety percent that fuck head boss of yours, but dying was all on you. You are _not_ allowed to do that shit to me again, because my heart can't take it."

Phil laughed and leaned in, kissing away her scowl. "Sweetheart, I'll do my best."


	15. Chapter 15

Life would be so much simpler if all the drama of it ended with the phrase "and they lived happily ever after." Not that Darcy Lewis was the kind of girl who expected the love of a good man to solve all her problems so she could while her time away in a castle, possibly guarded by a moat and dragons, wearing gorgeous clothes and thinking about pretty much nothing at all. That, in reality, sounded like her idea of Hell. Sure, if she wanted that out of life, she was pretty sure she could find a way to make that happen (and this was so conceited of her to think, but whatever, it wasn't like she didn't know she was attractive and well-endowed in the boob region). Darcy was just too smart and too ambitious to want to let other people solve her problems for her, even if she was also lazy enough to list Netflix binging as a life goal. The hard parts don't just go away because you're semi-reunited with a lost love.

After Phil came to find her (and oh, how it made her heart flutter to think about how he _specifically_ detoured himself heading back to the States on a "work thing" to stop in London and look for her) and they'd made out on that dirty floor, it was pretty much a given that she was done with work for the day. A text message to Eric claiming bad clam chowder at lunch was sent (because _no one_ in their right mind would want details after a message like that), then they took off for coffee. 

In a fairy tale, it would be nothing but love and protestations of affection, but this was real life and they'd been apart for two years. They were both different people than the ones who'd met that day in the desert and spent months getting to know one another. They had different goals now, different dreams. Expecting the two people they were to pick up where the two people they had been left off was ridiculous and unrealistic. Doing that would all but guarantee failure. So, for the time being, it was coffee and walking and talking. 

Given the necessary secrecy around his life, the talking was mostly about Darcy. Phil got to hear all about school and her professors, the friends she'd made in the new program. He was impressed by her dedication to her studies and said so.

"Actually... I have you to thank for that. So thank you."

"Me? That one you're going to have to explain."

Over the course of their wandering, Darcy had inadvertently (or more to the point, unknowingly) guided them to Green Park. It was one of her favorite places in the whole city, near the Palace but out of the way. It was a sea of sometimes busy tranquility amid the hustle and bustle of the city. She spotted an empty bench and headed in that direction, knowing Phil would follow her.

"Well..." And this was the harder part. "When... everything happened-" She couldn't say the words _'when you died'_ , not again and not when he was very much alive and sitting beside her. "- it took me a little while to get my feet back under me. I had myself a good wallow and I worried the hell out of my Dad and my Uncle and Jane too." Her coffee had been cold for a long while, but she sipped at it anyway. "But once I stopped being quite so angry at the world- not just about you, but for Jane too, and for everyone who lost someone that day- I started thinking. Jane's research... it's important. She's going to do it one day, Phil. She's going to open up an Einstein-Rosen Bridge and the world-shit, the whole universe- is going be a hell of a lot smaller. And honestly, I don't know that I trust the current batch of world leaders to apply her research properly."

Phil nodded, listening intently as she spoke. "I don't blame you. They don't exactly have a good track record."

Darcy laughed, shaking her head. "No, they do not. And this is the kind of science that is going to polarize people even more than they already are." She paused, watching a cyclist ride by, enjoying the cool breeze that filtered through her hair to her neck. "If I don't trust the political savages to treat this with the care that it needs, then I better find someone to champion who I _do_ trust- but that means understanding the technology and its theoretical and practical applications way more than someone without a solid foundation in the field is capable. So, back to school I went. Not Culver this time though."

"A second degree is a lot of work- and a big expense for someone whose calling is an unpaid internship."

She shot him a wink at that. "Yeah, well... Sitwell was half-assed trying to recruit me once Jane was done with me. So he was the one who suggested broadening my skillset and bribed me with a guaranteed ride at IWL if I'd be his padawan. Basically."

The impassive Agent mask that had been so wonderfully absent since he'd walked through her door that afternoon was back in place and Darcy couldn't help but wonder what it was he was hiding with it. He almost surely was. "And what did you tell him?"

She shrugged, turning her attention back to the park around them, watching a pair of crows or maybe jackdaws fight over a french fry. "I told him I'd think about it. But then I kind of told him to fuck off in November, so I'm thinking that job offer has been rescinded."

"That's probably a fair assumption."

"Yeah, I thought so."

Phil took a moment before speaking up again. "I'm still not seeing how any of what you've done is due to me. You were the one who put in the time. You deserve all the credit."

That was enough to pull her attention away from the birds and turn it back to the man beside her. "You gave up everything to make the world a better place, Phil. Letting that sacrifice be in vain seemed like a pretty shitty way to memorialize someone I cared about."

His shoulders drooped and his head bowed, suddenly finding something enormously interesting in his coffee cup. Darcy set hers aside, then took Phil's as well. He didn't protest, just watched while she took his hands and squeezed. "So yeah. You're totally the reason why I did that."

Phil shook his head, watching her. "I don't know what to say."

She smiled and bumped him with her shoulder. "You don't have to say anything, dork. It's not like I expect a thank you or anything. I just... I wanted you to know. That's all."

He raised her hands and brushed his lips across her knuckles. "You are an amazing woman, Darcy Lewis."

She laughed then, leaning against his shoulder comfortably. "Right? I'm a fucking catch, that's what I am. It's mind-boggling that I'm single." 

Phil laughed with her, smiling as he squeezed her fingers once more. "Now that is surprising. I would have thought that you'd have them lining up."

That earned him a derisive snort. "You've seen my life, Phil. I barely have time for school, let alone the boys that go there. The chances of being inadvertently tapped to save the world _again_ get higher every day. I just don't have it in me to babysit some twenty-something dudebro while he's figuring his shit out."

"It sounds like you've got a lot on your plate."

"I've got enough that the prospect of that sounds completely unappetizing."

Silence drew out between them while they ignored the elephant in the room- or in their case, the park. It was Phil who finally made the move. 

"You know... I'm not twenty-something."

"I kind of picked up on that."

"I'm not thirty-something either. I'm barely still forty-something."

"That's never mattered to me."

"I'm know it hasn't, but it needs to be said."

"Why does it need to be said, Phil? I might be young, but I'm not a child. I know what I want."

Phil twisted toward her, taking both her hands in his and holding them tight. There was an intensity to him, bordering on desperation. "It needs to be said because I need you to understand some things about me, Darcy. I know you 'know', but I need you to truly _understand_."

Darcy didn't flinch. "So tell me. Make me understand."

"... I have enemies. Enemies that might come after you if they know about our connection."

"And I have a Norse god watching my back. If they want to tangle with him, they won't come out on top."

"Point. But I also have responsibilities now that I didn't have before. For all I know, this might be the last time we can see each other for months."

"The lack of face time didn't bother me before, Phil. We can figure it out."

Stress or concern or something drew his brows together, creasing them in a frown. "There's also the big one, Darce. I'm different now. I'm changed... in ways that I'm not even one hundred percent sure of."

"And I'm not afraid." Darcy pulled her hand from his and brushed her fingertips along the line of his jaw. "Look... I'm not saying let's run off and get married. I'm saying... let's get to know each other again. Maybe there's nothing here, maybe there's something. Either way, we're never going to find out for sure if we don't give it an honest shot. And if that's more than you can give right now-" She shrugged, the corner of her lips pulling into a grin. "-then just text me. Talk to me."

Phil looked away, eyes scanning the lawn and trees around them. Darcy watched him, wishing that she had that dope ass ESP shit that Professor X had because it would make waiting for Phil to do or say _anything_ so much easier. 

"Okay."

That- That did not help at all. "Okay?"

"Yeah. Okay."

"You want to share what that means with the rest of the class?"

"It means... okay. It means let's see what's here. What's left. What there is to build on."

Darcy thought it over for a second and, slowly, that half-grin spread from ear to ear. "Okay."


End file.
